Chris O’Dowd, and yes.
Being of the Northern Irish ilk I can confirm that his accent in that film is pretty good, you can tell he’s having to think about what he’s saying and is speaking a little slowly as a result but its a good attempt.
I’ve always been of the opinion that Brad Pitt is an underrated actor, he’s more than just a pretty face.
btw its been years since I’ve seen that film but I seem to recall that while his accent was fine I don’t think it was particularly a Belfast accent…which, and lets be fair, sounds like someone dragging a cat backwards over a bed of nails…
(hah, do your worst you swine, I’ll never talk!)
I don’t have a good ear for accents but even I could tell that David Boreanaz was horrid. The funny thing is that when I started watching Angel I assumed Glenn Quinn was also faking the accent, just doing a better job of it. He just sounded so stereotypically Irish! I get the same impression when I hear some genuinely posh English accents - I guess because they’re the default imitated accent, it’s jarring to hear a real example of them.
I’d really only paid any attention to him on that Scrubs episode <seen it a dozen times, though> and…I recently saw a brief part of an interview of his, and…I did a double-take, because it sounded like his accent was different.
So now I’m going to have to go back and compare, cause I just figured ‘wow, he used a different Irish accent for a show, when he really HAS an Irish accent!’
Of course that’s like saying someone’s using an American accent, and there likely isn’t such a thing. Too many varieties to nail down just one and say ‘that’s it.’ Maybe he was just farking around that day; or maybe I’m going deaf. 
I think David Boreanaz’s accent did improve, though it never got good or even decent, after he spent time around Glenn Quinn, the inverse of the way that James Marsters’ accent at Spike drifted in the final season of Angel, when Tony Head wasn’t around to be an example.
In a later episode of* Angel*, in which the gang regress to their teenage selves due to a spell gone wrong, “Young” Angel was surprised to notice he no longer had an Irish accent. I think that was an acknowledgment of the deficient accent. But Boreanaz was a young actor at the beginning of his career–who started in a couple of shows about vampires. There was no excuse for Julia Roberts’ dreadful attempt in Michael Collins. She must have been hired for her “star power.” Too bad she wouldn’t do the work to learn how to speak properly.
Due to her childhood in Ireland, it’s no surprise that Anjelica Huston did well in The Dead. In this 2008 interview, she’s asked about her favorite Irish song:
Presumably part of the problem stems from the perception that there’s “the accent” of Ireland and not several different ones. Some accents you hear in film and television are atrocious and I wonder if it is partly a hangover for music hall days, stage Irish stuff. I can put on a “generic” American accent that sounds vaguely plausible, unless you’re actually American. 
Anyone else desperate to hear the mariachi version of “Galway Bay?”
I won’t say desperate but I’ll admit I looked for it on YouTube.
Accent to one side, we applauded the writers of the 1997 film The Jackal for having Gere’s character say “shite” instead of “shit”, which sounded much more authentic.
I’ve also heard people say his Pikey Irish accent in Snatch was spot on, but I don’t know enough about the different dialects to say. All I know I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It just seems to me that people that would know were impressed.
Yes, there are so many different accents. For instance the Cork accent is so very different to the Belfast accent. Someone earlier mentioned Chris O’Dowd. He’s from about 10 miles from where I’m from but his accent is slightly different from mine.
When Heroes had a few Irish episodes they really went all out. There were a brother and sister, one had a bad ‘generic’ Irish accent, the other had a bad ‘northernish’ Irish accent.
IMO, there’s no excuse for Julia Roberts, period. Can’t fucking stand her.
FYI, “pikey” is a derogatory term.
Sorta like the equivalent “white trash”? Or “Mick”? If I’m of Irish descent, does that make it ok for me to say it?
No.
Nowadays, the word is used to describe Gypsies or Travellers.
No Irish person says Pikey, that’s a British word. If we were being insulting we’d call them knackers. Calling a traveller a knacker is basically the same as calling a black man a nigger but accepted by some people who don’t like travellers.
Ok, good enough. Wiki does say “pikey” to describe Pitt’s character in Snatch, and I have heard other people use it to describe lower class Irish, so I thought it was ok to use. Come to think of it, those people were Brits, so i should have guessed it wasn’t nice. I also thought “knacker” and “knackered” referred to being tired, worn out, beat up, etc…
Either way, was Brad Pitt’s accent correct for this character?
I just watched Laurence Olivier’s Henry V last night, and the actor they had playing the Irish soldier Captain MacMorris had the worst Irish accent I’ve ever heard. I don’t think the actor playing him had ever met an actual Irishman before.
Pretty much but I think he over egged the pudding for comic effect.