Mainstream = major or indie, just not some movie or show where they are obviously intentionally not trying, where it is part of the joke, or some like Soviet movie where the closest they could get is a Czech guy.
Generally, there are more instances of Americans doing bad accents, probably because Hollywood is ubiquitous and everybody is exposed to American movies. What about the opposite case?
Inspired by Gone Girl, where Rosamund Pike just sounded off to me at times.
Not meaning to win the thread right out, but also inspired by Tommy Wiseau, who takes the cake. From his insisting that he is 100% American and loves “the footballs,” while making Tomik and Bellgarde look like natives.
I’ve heard David Tenant’s was bad on the American version of Broadchurch.
Oddly enough, I also heard the Karen Gilan’s was terrible on that Selfie show. Her real accent is pretty thick.
I also remember that Shirley Manson tried to do an American accent on Terminator, but they gave up on it after an episode or so. Hers is probably the worst I’ve seen since her real accent is super thick and she isn’t a trained actress.
James Callis tried to do one on Eurkea, but it was horrible. His real accent is very distinct and hard to override.
Julianne Moore tried to do a Boston accent on 30 Rock, but it was so bad she might have been kidding. In fact, I’m pretty sure she was.
I agree that Rosamund Pike sounded odd in Gone Girl. If I didn’t know she is British I don’t know that I’d necessarily peg her as such, she just sounded strange. Same with Hugh Laurie, Gillian Anderson, Christian Bale to name a few. I wouldn’t say they don’t do “good” American accents; they just sound like Americans with annoying voices. With that, I’ll just cut to the chase and mention Charlie Hunnam whose accent was just as cheesy and fake as his character name on Sons of Anacrchy - “Jax Teller”.
As it happens I believe I know the answer to this one.
Horror film The Devil’s Tomb starring (former Oscar winner) Cuba Gooding junior has a cameo by Ray Winstone who for unknown (and very misguided) reasons attempts to adopt his notoriously London accent into what I’m guessing is supposed to be American. Truly, stunningly bad.
He also picks up bonus points for portraying a ‘Special Forces Soldier’ with a pronounced beer gut.
An odd film. Gooding is on autopilot and just frowns the whole film. Ron Perlman also has a cameo which he phones in. Henry Rollins - tattoos and all - is a priest and hams it up to pantomime levels possibly thinking he is in another film althogether.
Good choice. Although many BBC shows over the years didn’t pay too close attention to American accents.
Gillian Anderson? She is American. I know she spent portions of her childhood in the UK and lives there now but her natural accent is American. She was recently on The Nerdist podcast and you can hear her natural accent. Which sounds just like she did on the X-Files.
Band of Brothers was filed with actors doing incredibly good American accents. Many of them I couldn’t tell were British until I looked it up later. The one that stood out as spectacularly bad was Marc Warren as Albert Blithe who was the main character in one of the episodes.
This thread and any like it would be incomplete without mentioning the great Sean Connery who plays English, American, Russian, Spanish, Irish… Any nationality you want and stoically maintains his Scottish brogue.
That is interesting about Gillian Anderson, Loach. I’d always heard she was British and maintained that accent IRL, though I’d never heard her use it.
So, she just has a very grating voice. Good to know
Gillian Anderson’s accent varies, depending on where she is. As noted, she was born in the U.S., but spent much of her childhood in England.
When she’s in England, she speaks with an English accent. When she’s in the U.S., she speaks with an American accent. She’s talked about this herself, and claims that this is not any kind of affectation. It’s just something that happens to her voice, often without her even realizing that her accent has changed until someone points it out.
Dr Who spin off Torchwood starred John Barrowman who was born in Scotland and bought up in America. He tends to speak with an American accent in America and a Scottish accent in Scotland but wherever he is and however he is speaking he is accused of faking his accent.
However Mel Gibson who was born in America and bought up in Australia seems to be able to manage both accents well. Although I don’t think he has tried Australian for quite a while.
I love him as an actor (especially as Horace Rumpole “of the Bailey”), but Leo McKern gets my vote for Worst American Accent by sometime not from the USA. I’ve heard him do it on audio recordings, and his method of performing a character with a US or Canadian accent seems to be to speak more slowly and deliberately, ironically without completely losing his characteristic British pronunciation and lilt. I don’t know if he’s speaking slowly because he’s taking extra effort to try and get the accent right, or because he thinks we actually speak that way.
The WW2 mystery series Foyle’s War was awesome in every way… except for a few of the guys playing American soldiers. The accents weren’t painful, just noticeably off. Sort of a nasally, talking-from-the-side-of-the-mouth thing. There was one guy who played a villainous sergeant who was just bad.
Dominic West’s accent in The Wire also wasn’t routinely terrible, just inconsistent. Usually I didn’t notice it, but then there would be times when I thought, “My god, man, what was that?” I did love the scene where McNulty was going undercover as a British gentleman and put on a terrible British accent.
Michael Palin’s American accent in The Meaning Of Life was terrible, but I’m not sure if that was intentional. In fact , none of the Pythons did a very good American accent (besides the obvious one)
