[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
John Hillerman, Higgins on “Magnum P.I.”, sounded pretty posh to me even though he’s from Texas. Any Brits have an opinion?
[/QUOTE]
I’ve heard people say that he did a good British accent there, even some Brits. To me, he didn’t sound very British. More upper-crust American, a bit like one of the Crane brothers in Frasier. Although I suppose they sound slightly British too, to some people.
[QUOTE=chowder]
You can take your white rose and shove it where the sun don’t shine, innit? 
You pronounce it noo-gah?
I suspect you’re really a suvvern poof at heart 
[/QUOTE]
Well I actually am a southern poof and I say it noo-gah, so if the shoe fits…
[QUOTE=chowder]
You pronounce it noo-gah?
I suspect you’re really a suvvern poof at heart
[/QUOTE]
Well, I did live in and around London for six years and even liked the beer there. I’m not helping my case, am I?
And for a best accent: Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors.
Ben Affleck did a good English accent in Shakespeare in Love.
Ok, I’m going to chime in on the noo-gah/nu-guht debate. As far as I’m concerned, it’s nu-guht when it’s the traditional British sweetshop style stuff (usually sold in pink and white bars now), and noo-gah when refering to abomination found in Milky Way/Mars bar/Snickers (and anything ‘continental’).
Southern softie here.
OB
In both the original TV show and their films, the Monty Python boys sometimes put on an unconvincing American dialect – though perhaps the word is not “unconvincing” but “exaggerated for comic effect.”
[QUOTE=OpalCat]
Dude’s got a set of pipes! Who knew? (probably everybody, but I didn’t!)
[/QUOTE]
He’s started out in musical theatre in London’s West End and has released a few albums, but that’s not widely known in the U.S.
He grew up mostly in the U.S. and mainly speaks in an American accent, but when he’s hanging out with his family slips into a Scottish accent.
I date a New Zealander girl who had been in the U.S. for over 20 years and I noticed that same thing. SHe always spoke with an American accent, but when she was on the phone with her parents, she had a very conspicuous Kiwi accent. It seemed like a switch was flipped in her head, I don’t think she did it consciously.
The worst of all time for an American going British is Keanu Reeves in Dracula. It comes and goes and no matter how hard he might try he can’t lose the surfer dude accent. Going the other way, while it’s not exactly the worst but was pretty bad was Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction. He gets the inflection wrong on “motherfucker” every time he says it and it’s nails on a chalkboard for me. Everyone knows you stress the second syllable, not the first.
I guess you mean the third syllable. Or else I have a lot to learn about American accents.
[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
Daphne from Frasier is horrible. I really hated her guest spot on Seinfeld. I was gobsmacked to learn she was a Brit.
[/QUOTE]
Waitaminit. Didn’t she use the same accent for that character? So a British actor used the same bad, fake British accent for two unrelated roles?
[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
The worst of all time for an American going British is Keanu Reeves in Dracula. It comes and goes and no matter how hard he might try he can’t lose the surfer dude accent. Going the other way, while it’s not exactly the worst but was pretty bad was Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction. He gets the inflection wrong on “motherfucker” every time he says it and it’s nails on a chalkboard for me. Everyone knows you stress the second syllable, not the first.
[/QUOTE]
You mean the third syllable.
(Or do you really say moTHERfucker?)
But the stress varies by context:
E.g. - He lit out like a MOTHerfucker when he saw her husband come into the bar.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
You mean the third syllable.
(Or do you really say moTHERfucker?)
But the stress varies by context:
E.g. - He lit out like a MOTHerfucker when he saw her husband come into the bar.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I messed that up. We say MOTHerfucker but all through Roth’s delivery of his story about running dope and getting stuck in the bathroom with the cops and the dog he keeps saying motherfuckAH, which works in some contexts but not the one he was using it in.
[QUOTE=cochrane]
Lena Heady, whose family is English, was born in Bermuda and moved back to England with her family when she was eight. Listening to her play Sarah Connor in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, you wouldn’t know she isn’t an American
[/QUOTE]
When I commented that Headley was a bit stilted in that show my g/f reckoned that the reason was her attempt at an American accent stopped her from loosening up somewhat.
The worst British accent in Frasier was that bloke who was supposedly from Northern England, but sounded like he was South African.
[QUOTE=Big Bad Voodoo Lou]
Several episodes of Buffy and Angel, in fact. Whenever they showed a flashback to his early life as Liam (human) or Angelus (his evil vampire persona, before he was cursed with a soul and became good-guy Angel), he spoke with a horrible Irish accent.
Meanwhile, his Angel castmate Alexis Denisof, another American, did one of the best British accents I’ve ever heard as the character Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.
[/QUOTE]
Alexis Denisof isn’t British, but he lived and worked in England for several years before moving to California. In fact, his “real” accent sounds really wrong to me.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Waitaminit. Didn’t she use the same accent for that character? So a British actor used the same bad, fake British accent for two unrelated roles?
[/QUOTE]
Make that three. She used the same accent when she was an occasional supporting character on “Murphy Brown”.
I don’t know if an Englishman would find John (“Magnum P.I.”) Hillerman’s English accent convincing, but he spent so many years playing English roles that, when I saw him doing a Texas accent in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles,” he sounded ridiculously phony… even though he really WAS a native Texan, and he was undoubtedly speaking in his real voice for a change!
Mark Addy plays Chicagoan Bill Miller on the TV show Still Standing.
Which really, really threw me for a loop when I saw him in The Full Monty, sounding very non-American. I thought it might just be two lookalike actors.
I had lived in Tennessee for over forty years and Nashville for twenty when I was told that I didn’t sound like I was from Nashville. So I had to use my fake “magnolia” accent to get on TV. It made the guys behind the camera smile, but they nodded and I knew I was in. At least I didn’t have to use hillybilly twang.
She’s going to learn “magnolia” before long. She lives in Nashville some of the time.
I was stunned when I realized that Hugh Laurie was the guy from Black Adder. I think he does a great job. He does a good blend of American accents.
[quote]
Lobsang: You mean… the word ‘fillet’ is pronounced without the ‘t’, “fillay” by some countries?
[quote]
In America we have “vallay” parking. What about over there?
Both she and Julie Andrews played it for comedy. English was Julie Andrews native language. It was not Audrey Hepburn’s.
Well I for one was surprised to find out that Higgins in MPI was actually played by an American.
I’ll just add that Jean Luc Picard on ST TNG supposedly a Frenchman sounded amazingly like a Brit,but to be honestI think an assumed French accent would tend to grate after a very short while.
[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
I’ll just add that Jean Luc Picard on ST TNG supposedly a Frenchman sounded amazingly like a Brit,but to be honestI think an assumed French accent would tend to grate after a very short while.
[/QUOTE]
<fanwank>The person who programmed the Uninversal Translator was both English and a comedian; hence the French sound English when they’re translated by the UT. </fanwank>