Ben Affleck in any movie where he does a Boston accent. You might think that Ben Affleck isn’t putting on a Boston accent on film and instead is using his natural accent, but it’s a ruse. Ben Affleck doesn’t have a Boston accent. He was born in California and grew up in Cambridge. He never had a Boston accent and when he does one it’s very bad. It’s not as bad as some (Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner both failed much more miserably than Affleck) but it’s not at all good.
I saw some of the other auditions for Leia (Cindy Williams was one) on one of the DVDs (or the internet, can’t really remember) and Fisher blew her competition out of the water hands down. Maybe she messed up her accent but it works in the film for the above reason.
Rob Morrow in Quiz Show. I sat through the first half hour of that movie wondering what the fuck he was trying to do. Then Charles Van Doren’s mother said something like, “From your accent, I can tell you’re from Boston.” Thank God they wrote that line into the script.
Re: The great Brad Pitt/The Devil’s Own controversy —
Just before the movie came out, New York magazine (IIRC) took a video into several NYC Irish bars and played a couple of his scenes for various Irish expats. They all said if they didn’t know better, they’d have thought he was a native speaker.
Ab.so.lutely.
And I nominate both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in “Far and Away from an Irish Accent.”
Has nobody mentioned John Wayne as Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror”? It’s the stuff of legend.
Stephen Hawking’s American accent is horrible.
They don’t even bother giving Schwarzenegger’s characters a country of origin in most of his films. He can’t even pull of a proper robot accent. Hell, he probably couldn’t even pull off a convincing Austrian accent.
As soon as I saw the title to this thread, this is what I wanted to say. I can not STAND his attempt at an Austrian accent in 7 Years In Tibet. I struggled so hard to get through that movie partly because of the odd sounds coming out of his mouth. At times, he sounded Southern and other times he just sounded like he had a speech impediment. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard him do a good accent. He should just stop trying them. Please Brad, just stop.
Also I nominate Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent in Gangs of New York. Again, he just ended up sounding Southern. I feel these slippages into Southern may be because the actors attempting the accent are not comfortable acting while doing an accent. It does add another layer to your thought process and maybe when they get tripped up they just slip into any ole accent that they do feel comfortable in. Their lips and brain thinking “hey I’m doing an accent!”, everyone else thinking “it’s not the right one”.
On another note, I would like to defend Meryl Streep’s accent in A Cry In the Dark. I thought it was pretty damn good. It may have been a little exaggerated at times but ,IMO, Australian is one of the hardest accents to do so I am always impressed by those that can do it successfully.
Which is amusing as he is a US Citizen.
Most of the accents in it were shit. You could I suppose fanwank their erstazness by saying that at that time and in that place people spoke with mangled Irish/American accents but I find most of the “Oirish” accents really jarring in that film.
It’s mentioned in the film,Bill the Butcher: On the seventh day the Lord rested, but before that he did, he squatted over the side of England and what came out of him… was Ireland. No offense son.
Amsterdam Vallon: Nah, none taken, sir. I grew up here. All I ever knew of Ireland was from the talk of the others at the orphan asylum.
Bill: And which part of that excrementitious isle where your forebears spawned?
Amsterdam: I’ve been told Kerry, I lost proof of it in my language at the asylum.Now, whether this was to deal with the inconsistencies in the accents of the New York Irish (and use it to establish that they were not the Irish in New York they were the Irish New Yorkers) or just to make an excuse for DiCaprio’s (et al.) poor accent(s) remains a question.
CMC fnord!
Since it hasn’t been brought up and I’ve never read anything about it anywhere, I’ll assume Don Cheadle’s British accent in the Oceans movies was purposely awful as some sort of joke. Because if not, it’s the worst attempt I’ve heard.
I expected the first post to be about Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
Don’t remember what it was supposed to be (Armenian?), but Dennis Hopper’s accent on the TV show 24 was all kinds of shitty.
How about Tom Cruise in Far and Away?
I remember hearing some dialect coach once say that the hardest accents for actors to fake are Irish and Russian.
Actors can slip a bad Irish accent past the rest of the world, but native Irish recognize the fake in an instant. Same thing goes for the Russians.
The worst accents I’ve ever heard were Diane Keaton and Jessica Lange trying to be Mississippi southern belles in Crimes of the Heart. Made me cringe.
Sandra Bullock’s southern accent in The Blind Side was pretty bad.
Yeah IIRC that was woeful too. I imagine in the English language that Irish and Kiwi accents are hardest to fake, probably alongside Welsh and Scottish, in that they’re rarely heard by comparison with other accents. In these isles there’s also a plethora of somewhat distinct accent so if a character is meant to be from Belfast and sounds like they’re from Dublin it’s a real no-no to local audiences.
Maybe not an accent per se, but anyone trying to portray a Texan by saying stuff like: “I’m blanker than a blank blank in a blank.” I grew up in West Texas, and no one – and I mean NO ONE – talks like that.
Kevin McKidd is supposed to be American in the TV show Journeyman.
His line at the beginning of Commando establishes him as an anti-Communist refugee who naturally ended up in a top-secret elite US Army unit: “Venn I vas a little boy in East Chermany…”