> It always perplexed me that many Americans seem to think Australians sound
> English, and thus get them to play us (e.g. Anthony LaPaglia). But I worked it
> out after meeting a few Aussies who’d lived in the States for a few years. To
> get from an Australian to an American accent, you apparently have to go
> through an English accent. Yep. Don’t know how it works, but it’s true.
Certain characteristics of the accents of Australians and Brits are shared (and not heard in American English). Certain characteristics of the accents of Australians and Americans are shared (and not heard in British English). Certain characteristics of the accents of Brits and Americans are shared (and not heard in Australian English). Thus Americans hear the shared similarities of Australian and British English and if they don’t want to listen harder, they can’t distinguish them. At least once a Brit told me that she heard Australian and American English as being similar in some ways. Do Australians sometimes hear American and British English as being similar in some ways? In general, it’s easy to hear the characteristics of your own dialect. It’s harder to make out the features of other dialects.
It’s not true that Australians frequently do British roles in U.S. TV or movies. Anthony LaPaglia is a special (and weird) case. When he moved to the U.S., he decided to specialize in a very particular accent - an Italian-American New Yorker. He does this exclusively in his American roles, and it’s now become his natural accent in normal speech. Why the casting director on Frasier decided to cast him as a Brit is anyone’s guess.
Speaking of Doctor Who, John Barrowman’s(Capt. Jack Harkness) accent is dead perfect. I was freakin shocked when I heard him interviewed out of character, I had no idea. Unless the Scotish accent was a put-on, then Wooooosh on me
John Barrowman was born in Scotland, but raised in Joliet, Illinois. I think he’s lived in the UK for some time now. I’ve always been a bit confused by his “American” accent. It seems to slip just a bit on certain words.
Barrowman grew up in the States and still lives in California… I’ve only ever heard him talk with an American accent, even when he was a kid’s TV presenter.
Is everyone forgetting Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle? (shudder)
I heard an interview with Mahoney. I seem to recall that he said he joined the U.S. Navy or something when he was 17 and changed his accent in order to fit in.
I thought he lives over here now, with his civil partner? He’s on the telly often enough anyway! When he gets interviewed on a Scottish programme, he uses his Scottish accent - he sounds like he’s exaggerating it a little though, but I guess that’s part of his personality.
Who could forget the worst Scottish accent ever, Christopher Lambert in Highlander. I thought he modern day accent worked well. It sounded like a mismash of accents like he was living in various countries for a few hundred years. But in the flashbacks he was awful.
Really? Wow. I mean, for me - it’s not a terrible accent but I could easily tell he was putting it on. A number of my English friends cringe when they hear it.
I’ve read that in real life, she speaks with an American accent when she’s in the United States and a British accent when she’s in the United Kingdom.
One that surprised me was Alan Cumming. I’d seen him do a number of different accents in various roles but I never realized he actually spoke with a Scottish accent until the first time I heard him not playing a character.
But Brion James, as “The Englishman” in Tango and Cash would actually have benefited if he’d taken lessons from Dick Van Dyke. (Seriously. His performance as, apparently, a South African with some sort of sprained larynx, is my personal benchmark for bad attempts at an English accent. Anthony LaPaglia runs him pretty close, though.)
I once saw Mr. Hill do a sketch in which he played a Confederate soldier. I didn’t mind the way he mangled a southern drawl, but he had “Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing in the background!
Someone I’m surprised hasn’t been mentioned yet: Renee Zellweger did a very good Brit accent as Bridget Jones. Granted she was speaking the way Americans probably think we all talk (i.e. we’re all from Hampshire) but the way she represented that accent was extremely good.
Daniel Day Lewis does a mighty fine american accent.
Also, Christian Bale does pretty well for the most part, but before I knew he was british, I just thought he had a unique way of articulating himself. Now I figure he has it down about 98%, enough to pass as american with something you can’t quite put your finger on.
Another nod for Jamie Bamber. Both my wife and I were blown away when we first heard him speak in his real voice. We had no inkling.
The chick on Sarah Connor Chronicles is pretty good to, although if you’re paying attention, you can catch some slips. Same for the Bionic Woman chick.
No cite, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read in an interview that there was a concious decision among the production team that no single actual accent would work, and that the best option was to create the holy grail, the generic ‘British’ accent.
I’ve always taken the accents of her family to be an ironic nod in the direction of the British fans who put up with Daphne’s voice for so long. After you create an a character with an accent which cannot place her in any real location, then perhaps the only option is for other ridiculous voices to emerge.
I cannot hear my mother’s Irish accent in normal conversation, although others notice it straight away. However, when she is on the phone to one of her sisters, it changes entirely.
I’ve heard a lot of ear-splittingly bad American accents on the BBC Radio dramas I listen to at work. I just heard one today - Of Rats and Men - that I almost had to stop listening to because the accents were so bad. There are a few actors they hire regularly that they seem to think do really good American accents. They don’t.
I do remember an amusing moment on Feedback, following on from the extracts from Last Man Down. The complainants hated the obviously over-the-top stereotypical New York accent. It turned out that the actor reading them was from Brooklyn :smack:
