The attempt Jamaican accents in the film ‘Cool Runnings’.
Hasn’t anyone seen “Crossing Jordon”? Dear gawd, why do they even bother attempting a Boston accent?! Ken Howard in particular is horrible. I’ve rarely seen a Boston accent done well in TV/film, even recognizing that there are several different accents in the region. Try to find a reasonable NH or Maine accent as well, quite different.
I’ve also heard that American English is the only language in the world that uses a terminal ‘R’ sound (i.e., pronounces the r in tailor).
No, it isn’t unique. The English dialects in Ireland, Scotland and southern rural England (essentially the ones that contributed historically to American English) all use a terminal ‘R’.
Even worse is the dreaded “meandering accent”, where their accents wander in and out of their lines.
Worst. Southern. Accent. Ever. – Keaneau Reeves in Devil’s Advocate He sounded like a cross between Bear Bryant and the characters on Designing Women. But, he was playing a lawyer from Gainesville, Florida. Better to have used his normal voice.
And I don’t know why they feel the need to do it. I think we’ve shown a willingness to not really worry about what accents people are speaking with. Heck, the 1998 Les Miserables was on Bravo last night, and all the actors spoke English, some of em with a British accent.
I doubt anyone knows what the New York accent was supposed to sound like at that point in history, but Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York seems to have butchered it nontheless. Ha ha! “Butchered”, get it?
Beat me to it! Just what I was thinking after reading the op.
What can I say N&IS ? Weird minds think alike 
Hopkins did a movie in the late '70s called Magic where he plays a ventriloquist from New York City, his first role where he plays an American. He tried to do some sort of quasi-Brooklyn accent which didn’t come off too well. In some scenes he does OK, but others he slips back into his Welsh accent. But darn it, he tries!
In my experience the vast majority of people attempting any accent make a mess of it. Even I wince when I hear most British actors attempting an American accent, and there are practically no American actors who can do a British accent no matter how often they try.
Would they have been more authentic without a British accent then?
You make a good point though. If an actor can’t replicate an accent convincingly they shouldn’t even try, and if that’s a problem for the role then they ought to cast someone from the appropriate place.
My mother is Scottish and used to do some stage acting. It always grates on her nerves to hear her home accent being butchered because she knew plenty of out of work actors would have been able to use their own.
Martin Scorsese has been interviewed extensively about that and he says they deliberately invented an accent to approximate what they believe it would have sounded like in that location at that time. He made no claims that it was supposed to sound like any native New Yorker of today.
I had the same thought about Colin Farrell in Phone Booth. His “NY” accent was pretty bad, and I’m sure there are a bunch of out-of-work actors in Brooklyn who could have done a great job with a better accent.
My point was, Les Mis was set in Paris, so if it was authenticity they’re after in the Great Accent Attempts, French actors should’ve been playing the roles and either speaking in French or with heavy French accents.
I take your point, but they didn’t fake their British accents. Neeson, Rush and the rest were using their own accents, just like Uma Thurman was. It seems strange that you should have said “some of em with a British accent” as though that was especially jarring, rather than saying “nobody attempted a French accent”.
I’m sure that’s what they did. I’m not trying to compare Daniel D-L’s accent to the stuff spoken in present-day NY. It’s just that the accent he did have sounded very muddled and contrived, and it wasn’t consistent throughout the movie.
I guess a good reason for that, though, was that he had to adapt a made-up accent nobody had ever heard before.
Most Afrikaner accents are terrible (Lethal Weapon 2) comes to mind. They usually don’t resemble anything close to the accent – I suppose the South African accent in general is not that common, and the Afrikaner accent is a very distinct subset of that.
OTOH, I saw Charlize Theron on SABC when I was in South Africa and she has one of the thickest South African accents I have ever heard. It is incredible that she doesn’t show even a hint of it in American television and movies.
Ahh, I was being unclear. I was pointing out that we have linguistic and accental abominations mentioned in this thread, presumably under the guise of authenticity. Yet, I was watching a movie set in France that had everyone speaking English, some with British accents.
Sorry if I’m making too much of this, GMRyujin, but why is it significant to you that some of them had British accents? What accents did the others have?
Colin Farrell’s accent in The Recruit (?) sounded very natural to me – just sort of a generic American accent. (Probably Mid-Western).
In another thread, DooWahDaddy mentioned Samuel French’s website where dialect tapes can be purchased. He mentioned that David Stern’s are the best:
I disagree about Meryl Streep’s ability with accents. She is so dedicated that she actually learned to speak Polish for her role in Sophie’s Choice. I don’t think she did as well with the Danish accent in Out of Africa though.
I am amazed at how easily Gwyneth Paltrow switches back and forth from a British accent to an American accent.
Reese Witherspoon may be from Louisiana, but she attended high school in Tennessee.
Aren’t Kim Basinger and Joanne Wooward Southern?
http://www.samuelfrench.com./dialecttapes.htm
Bumped this back up after the release of this poll from a UK magazine. This is their top ten list:
POLL: WORST FILM ACCENTS
- Sean Connery, “The Untouchables” (1987)
- Dick Van Dyke, “Mary Poppins” (1964)
- Brad Pitt, “Seven Years In Tibet” (1997)
- Charlton Heston, “Touch of Evil” (1958)
- Heather Graham, “From Hell” (2001)
- Keanu Reeves, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992)
- Julia Roberts, “Mary Reilly” (1996)
- Laurence Olivier, “The Jazz Singer” (1980)
- Peter Postlewaite, “The Usual Suspects” (1995)
- Meryl Streep, “Out of Africa” (1985)
– Source: Empire Magazine