Get your facts right, Spoke.
I read the biography, as well as saw the movie.
He went to Princeton, he did not go to Harvard (wanted to though).
I saw the 60 minutes interview also, but I was at a lecture Dr. Nash held in Philadelphia, PA, I saw and heard him in person.
I did not say he did not have an accent, but it has diminshed over time and experience.
You have your opinion and I have mine.
I don’t mind bad accents so much as the hokey tone of voice they use, for instance, in Dune.
Robin Williams is good at accents. His Jakob (Jakob the Liar) is Polish. Daniel Day Lewis on In the Name of the Father is even better.
Hey, I can’t get these to print italics. Or does it post different than it looks in preview?
Vivalostwages: Originally quoted by Blalron:" The woman who played Marla Singer in Fight Club, who is from England, did an excellent American accent. I didn’t know she is English until I saw her being interviewed, and talking in a thick british accent."
I didn’t know she wasn’t American either!
Don’t tell me the woman who played Marla is the one who played Ari on Planet of the Apes !
Vivalostwages: Originally quoted by Blalron:" The woman who played Marla Singer in Fight Club, who is from England, did an excellent American accent. I didn’t know she is English until I saw her being interviewed, and talking in a thick british accent."
I didn’t know she wasn’t American either!
Don’t tell me the woman who played Marla is the one who played Ari on Planet of the Apes !
Libertarian on “Hugo Weaving’s middle American accent”: I guess they’re doing a good job when I don’t realize they’re supposed to be “putting on” an accent but think they always speak that way.
That’s exactly what I’m telling you. 
Not bad, eh? She can go from British to Merkin and back again.
She hadn’t quite nailed it down at the time of The Peacemaker, at least for the scenes where she had to shout. “Toik the Shawt!”
Part of the performance is that she’s trying to hide her accent, which is suppossed to be a very ‘white trash’.
That’s all true, but Arquette’s accent was a perfect recreation of parodic Quebecois. Considering how mannered and broadly the film was playing (check Kevin Pollack’s ridiculous Hungarian and the impossibly stiff Montreal police inspectors), it was probably exactly what she was asked for.
Nobody’s mentioned this one yet, but I love Bob Hoskins’ accent in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” It’s not a particular city, but it’s a Hardboiled Hollywood Detective voice and he nails it very well. Again, comedy has different requirements.
And speaking of the Pythons, John Cleese lapses into a very funny American accent (and good, for about five words) at the end of “A Fish Called Wanda.”
But then, I have a thing for
FISH
What does “Merkin” mean? Is it some kind of play on “American?”
Al Pachino doing a Puerto Rican in Carlito’s Way. He did a passable Cuban accent in Scarface, even mumbling lines in Spanish, but it seems he got lazy over the years.
Unless I missed it I can’t believe that nobody has mentioned Don Cheadle in Oceans 11. Possibly the only cockney accent worse than Dick Van Dyke.
However, I think he is a terrific actor so he may have deliberately put on a truly terrible accent for fun.
That’s one of my very favorite pet peeves, when someone in a movie tries to fake a Southern accent. Or TV shows. I recall a promo for some A&E mystery in which a British-y dectective-type fellow goes to NC to solve a case. He encounters a young lady at a convenience store (which looks like an outhouse) who asks him “Yew ain’t frum araoun’ heyar ahr ya?” :smack:
To reiterate:
Not everyone in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, or Tennessee. I claim no knowledge about the accents in the other Southern states.
Yeah, I think I learned it from the SDMB in fact. It’s like saying “Murricans.”
A “merkin” is a pubic wig.
IIRC Cecil had a column on the origin of merkins.
It is also used in Terry Pratchett’s discworld series to denote an inhabitant of …er… a place where Merkins live.
Come to think of it, the Worst Accent Ever award should go to UK TV presenter Loyd Grossman. Not for his screen accent, but for his real one. Boston Lockjaw meets Oxbridge Wannabe. Guaranteed to have me reaching for the remote.
Keanu Reeves’s accent also sucked in Dangerous Liasons.
Glenn Close dubbed over Andie MacDowell’s speaking parts in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan because MacDowell’s accent was so distracting and terrible.
Since it was on, recently, A Knight’s Tale offers a plethora of bad accents; I think Shannyn Sossamon might be the most egregious sinner of them all.
I thought Lucy Lawless did a great job with the Southern Californian accent all the actors on Xena were asked to use, with only an occasional slip: “extrordn’ry,” etc.
Cary Elwes used to stomp on the r’s at the ends of words a lot, but he’s getting better. He sounded fine in Cat’s Meow.
I thought Lucy Lawless did a great job with the Southern Californian accent all the actors on Xena were asked to use, with only an occasional slip: “extrordn’ry,” etc.
Cary Elwes used to stomp on the r’s at the ends of words a lot, but he’s getting better. He sounded fine in Cat’s Meow.
William Hurt sounded uncomfortable in Gorky Park – but the character he played was under considerable pressure. Perhaps it was an exceptionally uncomfortable shoot. He just didn’t sound like he was from the same planet that Paulina Porizkova and the others came from.
HBO’s original movie Citizen X featured Stephen Rea, Donald Sutherland, Max Von Sydow, Joss Ackland, Jeffrey DeMunn, and a whole bunch of actual Hungarian (and Romanian? Czech?) actors in minor roles/extras. The accents were all over the place, but aside from that, it was a very fine movie.