For years French and Italian stars, including Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Sophia Loren, and Jean Reno have done roles in English language films. Now we see many actors from Spain (Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz), Hong Kong/China (Jackie Chan. Michelle Yeoh), and even some from Croatia (Goran Visnjic and Rade Srebedzija) in films and on TV. This is understandable, as Hollywood has the big bucks to draw people from half a world away, and “exotic” and “foreign” types have a certain allure that people from Indiana or New Jersey frankly don’t have on screen.
But are there any American actors of note that have gone to another country and acted in a film with non-English dialogue? And not dubbed of course.
I can only think of 1 or 2 near examples. I believe Mr.Brando spoke French during much of “Last Tango in Paris”. And Robert De Niro performed in “Godfather II” (an American film of course) speaking Sicilian Italian. And of course Hispanic-American actors like Edward James Olmos and Andy Garcia have had dialogue in Spanish, but in American films.
I went to The Interent Movie Database and searched for Candice Bergen, who (I happen to know) speaks fluent French. She was in a French film, Vivre pour vivre, and also in an Italian film, La Fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia
Well, John Malkovich stars in French films on a regular basis-does he count?
Malkovich freely admits that he does crappy American films like “Con Air” just to make enough money to do the low-budget French films he actually prefers to make.
Ron Perlman (sp?). He played the hunchback in “The Name of the Rose” and assorted other freaks in various movies. I’ve seen him in a few foreign movies. One of them was Mexican where he spoke fluent Spanish.R
“La Strada” features Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart. I have no idea how good their Italian was, but on the IMDB, Basehart had a lot of foreign titled films.
Orson Welles also appeared in a few foreign language films. This was mainly so that he could raise money for his own projects. Films include “The Immortal Story” (French) and “Royal Affairs at Versailles” (also French)but he also appeared in Spanish and Italian films.
It’s a while since I’ve seen La Strada and so I’m far from certain in this instance, but the fact that the dialogue was in Italian is no necessary indication that the actors were speaking it. Indeed it’s a very common phenomenon in post-war Italian cinema to have the lines dubbed in even when the actors were native speakers themselves. Fellini was particularly prone to picking actors purely on the basis that they had interesting faces and then having someone else do their lines. A parallel example would be Visconti using Burt Lanchaster in The Leopard - his lines are entirely dubbed.
Hardly an American example, but Kristen Scott Thomas regularly plays in French films. She’s married to a Frenchman and is fluent in the language.
Richard Basehart’s voice in La Strada was dubbed into Italian – whenever he speaks, the wrong voice comes out. Don’t know if Quinn spoke his own lines, though.
Trevor Howard did Windwalker, which was filmed in Cheyenne and Crow – a foreign language Oscar nominee that was filmed in the U.S.
Laurel and Hardy used to do Spanish language versions of their earlier shorts. They didn’t know a word of Spanish, so spoke their lines phonetically. Evidently, this inadvertantly gave them a hilarious accent that brought laughs no matter what they said.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Jodie Foster who appeared in the French-language film Moi, Fleu Bleue and the Italian-language film Casotto.
Robert DeNiro also spoke Italian in the Bertolucci film 1900.
According to what he said on the commentary track of the City of Lost Children DVD, Ron Pearlman does not speak a word of French and learned all of his lines phonetically. This was especially difficult as he is speaking French with a Russian accent.
Well if we’re going to include people speaking English while everyone else spoke another language… Clint Eastwood in all those spaghetti westerns counts.
There was also B-Movie macho man Nick Adams in Godzilla vs. Monster Zero speaking English dubbed into Japanese dubbed back into English.
For what it’s worth, just like Perlman in City of Lost Children, Gere learned all of the Japanese for the movie phonetically, which I imagine has to be insanely difficult. And another example of phonetics, though it isn’t a big movie star: The white-suited big bad guy in El Mariachi didn’t speak a word of Spanish, and repeated his lines by reading them off big cards after some training on pronunciation.
Small piece of trivia: Jodie Foster went to primary school in France, which helps account for her fluency.