Speaking as a former British actor, I’ll give the opinion that we Brits are almost universally bad at doing American accents. Shockingly so, and whenever I hear plays on the radio with these travesties, I have to switch off. The passable ones mentioned in the OP are very rare beasts, and also probably better at it because they’re pretty talented, and in Hollywood already.
On the flipside, there are few Americans who capture the English accent either. Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, and Connie Booth (debatable) are the only ones I can think of.
BTW, maybe this is a different thread, but what’s up with people not hearing the difference between English and Irish accents? They’re so amazingly different - in particular the rhotic/non-rhotic “R” sounds. Or do people just go “native English speaker but not American” and just panic, throwing out Australian, (unidentified) British, or Irish as possibilities?
I find it interesting that when I hear British or Aussie stand-ups “sounding American” as part of a routine, so often they seem to be putting on either Southern or Texan. It’s not as if you’ll here “ya’ll” or “pardner” in Philadelphia.
“Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” was my first exposure to Bob Hoskins. I was not aware that he was British until I read it in the newspaper. I thought he played a convincing American as Eddie Valiant. He did another good turn as Eddie Mannix in “Hollywoodland”.
LaPaglia’s pretty good. His “Without a Trace” co-star and fellow Aussie Poppy Montgomery does a LOUSY American accent. Bad enough that she can’t manage a generic “American,” her character is supposedly from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Not everybody from the upper Midwest sounds like the characters in “Fargo,” of course…but to not have the slightest trace of Wiyuscahnsin-isms in her voice just makes it absurd.
Slightly off-topic, but I’ve always wondered why English singers (in general) don’t have English accents when they sing. I remember as a young’n hearing Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, etc., being interviewed and thinking, “man, they sound absolutely nothing like they do on their albums.”
Most '60’s British Invasion groups were big fans of American music, specifically blues and related rock’n’roll. So, part of the answer is, they tried to sing somewhat like their Americam heroes. (The Stones were more into the black originals like Muddy Waters, while the Beatles were more into white artists like Carl Perkins).
Another part of the answer is that a lot of what makes up any accent – much intonation, etc. – is masked or lost when singing. This would make those, or any, groups’ singing accents somewhat closer, then, to a generic “English” rather than belonging to any particular accent.
What do you mean by “in general”? The ones you mention aren’t randomly-chosen English actors. They’re actors who have gotten major, prominent roles playing Americans. Presumably, if they didn’t do a very good job of emulating an American accent, the job would have gone to someone else.
Which accents are easiest, or most difficult, to “do,” for non-natives?
The ones most different from your own accent!
Unless I misunderstand your question, this seems to be analogous to the common myth that some languages are inherently harder to learn than others*. The question only makes sense if you know the speaker’s native language (or if they’ve learned a language that’s closer to the one in question).
(*Someone might nitpick that some languages, mainly non-written ones with a few thousand speakers, truly are harder to master in an absolute sense. Or, that pidgins – which are actually rare, mainly historical, and not full languages anyway (unless they become creoles) – are truly simpler in an absolute sense. But, in general, it’s still true – each language has own set of complications, and all are about the same “difficulty”.)
If you mean “Which accents are most difficult for a typical American?”, then I would guess probably an accent for a dialect which pushes the boundary of the definition of “English” – such as certain Scots dialects, and certain Caribbean ones.
It’s not accent that makes you sit up and notice ‘he’s not from round here:’ it’s the whole dialect. Americans written as Brits are more likely to be speaking American but with a British accent than vice-versa, because of the writers. ‘I could care less if y’all stay on the sidewalk’ sounds American even when said in crisp British RP.
There are some American actors who do British accents well these days too. I agree with Wendell Wagner that voice coaches seem to be getting more work these days. Spike and Wesley from Buffy are almost perfect - and, with the former, there are easy fanwank reason to explain his occasional lapses, though he even did well being posh English in addition to mockney English. (Angel’s ‘Oirish’ accent was absolutely fucking awful, though. I’ve rarely heard an American play Irish well. Perhaps there aren’t as many good voice coaches). There was an English actor on staff, of course - I’ve often wondered if he had a lot of input.
Agreed (presuming you’re joking about Bertie and Jeeves). People go where the money is.
Many of these actors are also not speaking in their native accents even when working in England (and lots of Irish actors learn to speak in British accents, too), though I suppose the same might be true for the US.
I had no idea he was meant to be English!
The terrible American accents you sometimes hear in British productions are often meant to be ‘comically awful,’ I think. They’re also low-budget, so won’t have a voice coach on set, or be hiring people who’ve had such training, or be able to pay enough to get people who are good at different accents without tons of training. Of course, that’s sometimes true for American shows as well.
Hugh Laurie wasn’t exactly a big name when he started on House, though.
I’d say that the hardest accents to do right are those that you have little access to, in the media and so on. Difficult to practise an accent at home if all you have is one movie and an audiobook with a single character whose accent’s also probably put on.
You mention that you didn’t know that John Hillerman’s character on Magnum, PI was “meant to be English”. I had the opposite experience with David Ogden Stiers’ character on MASH. Despite the constant references to his Boston home, I assumed the character was meant to be English (maybe moved to Boston later in life). Perhaps Stiers (whose real accent is neither Boston nor British) tried to do Boston, and “overshot” almost to British “territory” – or did his character sound completely non-British to a real English person, and perhaps there are some from Boston who talk just that way? (George Plimpton and Bill Buckley had some of that accent, but I still think Stiers’ character’s accent sounded more British than those two ever did.)
James Marsters has said in interviews that his “Spike” accent is based on Anthony Head’s natural accent.
It has been said on this very board that Jane Leeves – an actual English person – used the same blatantly fake accent across multiple roles.
I think he’s meant to be a Boston “Brahmin.” I suspect it’s not an accent that most people encounter much these days. I’m no expert on that accent, but my understanding is that Stiers did a good job with that accent.
Well, of course these aren’t randomly chosen actors. They’re actors that came to mind when I thought of this question. It wasn’t meant to be a scientific statement. I was just wondering why it’s so easy to think of British actors doing nearly flawless American accents and just as easy to think of American actors doing atrocious British accents.
The replies so far have done a lot to explain this phenomenon in various ways.
I’ve heard some pretty pathetic American accents out of Brits. Remember the fat “Americans” in “In Brouge”? Their accents were so Irish, I didn’t know they were supposed to be Americans until they were identified as such.
Apologies - I have no clue about Mash characters, having not seen it since I was tiny. It took me a long time to realise why the Boston accent sounds English to Americans, because, to me, it sounds really American.
Good old coffee man.
My GF’s from that area and was surprised Jane Leeves wasn’t (she’s actually from very near me, just outside London originally). I don’t think it’s blatantly fake. However, the accent you hear her speak with on TV, when she’s being Jane Leeves, might well not be the accent she grew up with in Ilford, unless she was from a very well-to-do family. Ilford people do not, on the whole, speak RP.
Another example: Pretty much any time the Pythons attempted to do North American accents, it came out terribly, to the point that, in my experience, many Americans don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing. A particular giveaway would be overcompensation for their native non-rhoticity (“suspendies and a brar… just like my dear mamar”, “Item six on the agender”).
I’m surprised that anyone thought that, in those parody sketches, the Pythons were really trying to be anything other than English people acting North American stereotypes.
You can’t seriously watch the lumberjack song and think Palin was trying to be Canadian, can you?
I’ve seen similar in American shows, where they weren’t just doing British accents badly, they were doing it on purpose. That’s signficantly different to what the OP was talking about.
