I’ve never seen that one and I think Michael C. Hall is a great actor, but his take as JFK in an episode of The Crown was like listening to some random guy sitting next to you on the subway who says, “Hey, check out my Kennedy impression I’ve been working on for 5 minutes!” It was like maybe the British people who make The Crown couldn’t tell just how bad he did.
But maybe that’s more of an impression complaint than a bad accent complaint. Dunno.
Yeah, “fluent” was the wrong word. I should know: I’ve lived in Israel since I was six years old and I still have a very slight American accent while speaking Hebrew.
I figured it was an oversight and am glad to see you agree. 
That’s how I felt about Martin Freeman in season 1 of Fargo. “I say old chap, check out my William H. Macy impression I’ve been working on for 5 minutes!”
Aha! Today I just figured out that it isn’t the accent that takes me out of a movie/show as much as an inconsistent one.
That Keanu in Dracula clip was so painful (that was a hat trick: Bad Accent, Inconsistent Accent, and Horrible Acting).
Someone mentioned Rizzoli and Isles; it would’ve been painful with a cadre of C-list actors trying to do a Boston accent…and slipping in and out of it.
.
Please show me how to attain these superpowers. My life would be so much less frustrating…
I don’t think it’s that hard for non-USAians to do a generic American accent. The country has so many regional accents, and as mentioned above they are rather fluid across a region so there’s no single southern accent. But a particular regional accent like ‘Bastan’ can turn even more ear-grating the genuine noise form when poorly imitated. Other regionals like Maine or Nawlins are also more difficult to pull off.
But again, matters not much to me. Suspension of disbelief and all that, at least as voices go.
John Malkovich’s “Russian” accent in Rounders is pretty notorious. He reportedly admitted to co-star Matt Damon that he was just making it up as he went and that “I’m a terrible actor.” For that matter most Hollywood Russian accents tend to be awful; they usually sound like, well, John Malkovich in Rounders.
The first time I saw Monty Pythong’s The Meaning of Life, it took me a while to realize the American couple was supposed to be American. I kept trying to figure out what accept they had and then suddenly in dawned on me. Really, really bad accents.
Hah! I loved that movie and thought Malkovich did a great job as Teddy KGB.
“Payyy theee mann”
John Malkovich has such a distinctive tone that it overrides any accent he puts on makes them all sound like John Malkovich.
Came here to talk about the accents in “The Wire”. While Idris Elba’s accent was terrific (check out Roy Wood Jr talking about it [https://youtu.be/UDcLlgsKg5U]). But I distinctly remember figuring out Dominic West was not American very early on.
I may have been whooshed, but she spoke with what I assume is her normal Irish accent in the MCU movies. Not many Americans say “knackered” after all.
Exactly re John M.
Just as in GoT, Dinklege’s faux English just evolves into “What he’s been doing for 8 years”
I just checked YouTube, and it appears that you’re right. Interestingly, I’d never caught it in the films. It could be that she usually only speaks a sentence or two at a time, so I just missed it until I watched a compilation of her dialogue.
To quote Sideshow Bob, “cheerfully withdrawn.”
Dominic West’s accent in The Wire (was it meant to be a Baltimore accent?) was no where near as good as his ‘fake British’ one in the same show. That really did sound, to me, like an American doing a pretty terrible English accent.
Scroll down just a bit…
“Now, remember … speak in German!”
Don’t click on this then:
Our target is a major transaction of microprocessors.
Seriously, if this link doesn’t disprove the thread title, nothing will.
Sometimes it just takes one line to jump out at me. Tim Roth was, overall, fine in Reservoir Dogs, but when he said “You’re not blind, there’s just blood in your eyes,” it sounded horribly affected.
Not that most people even bother, but I’ve seen a few bad (stereotypical) Canadian accents by non-Canucks. The Alan Rudolph film Afterglow is set in Montreal, and there’s an “oot” (for “out”) that emphatically lands at the end of a sentence that still gets my hackles up decades later. When Mike Myers dials up the “oot and aboot” for comedic effect, he’s actually representing a rural Ontario accent pretty accurately.
Tim Curry in Congo has a terrible accent. I think he’s Hungarian? And still don’t have a clue why his character is in the movie.
Silly accents in silly movies don’t particularly bother me. (See also: Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins)