Dey make take oooooor lifes, bud they woll nefer tayk ur freeedum!

November 18, 2016 6:30 AM

Accent Analysis. A well executed accent can be the sharpest tool in an actor’s toolbox. But when an accent is off, everyone notices. An analysis of movie accents.
posted by blue_beetle (91 comments total)

As someone who's fascinated with accents, this was really interesting!
posted by INFJ at 7:06 AM on November 18, 2016

Pretty interesting analysis. I was really hoping, though, he'd have done an extended bit on Damian Lewis , who seems to have made a career as a Brit playing Americans, and pretty convincingly to my tin ears. To me, it has always seemed that Brits have an easier go playing American accents than Americans have playing Brits.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:08 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm from London and Rene Zellweger's Bridget Jones accent is a work of art.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:08 AM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

this was great, and I appreciated the linguistic terminology.
posted by oog at 7:12 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

"As with all movies set in Boston, I spent less time paying attention to the plot and more time thinking 'that accent is good' or 'yikes, what's that guy doing?'"
posted by mr vino at 7:19 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Damian Lewis , who seems to have made a career as a Brit playing Americans, and pretty convincingly to my tin ears

I had no idea he was english until I saw Our Kind of Traitor!

I really enjoyed this video, I just wish the clips were a little longer, but the variety is great.
posted by Harpocrates at 7:20 AM on November 18, 2016

Great indeed.
Mastering an accent you're not familiar with is quite a feat. Then again, when an accent is important, why don't they hire local actors?

I wonder how he'd rate Hugh Laurie's House; I never could watch that because instantly Bertie Wooster or Blackadder's Prince Regent would pop into my mind and then my brain shut down from acute cognitive dissonance.
posted by farlukar at 7:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [12 favorites]

Love it. What I'm seeing is: bad hair equals bad accents. Good hair doesn't mean a good accent, but if it was an 80s rat's nest like Costner or Gibson was sporting, it means this was not the kind of movie where they cared about palatalizing or rhotic consistency.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

To me, it has always seemed that Brits have an easier go playing American accents than Americans have playing Brits.

Until recently, I would have said otherwise. Before Hugh Laurie and Idris Elba, it seemed as if they just wallowed directly in an ersatz non-rhotic Southern accent from blues singers or Gone With the Wind (depending on how evil the character was), or else clenched their jaw and put everything through their nose to try to sound like Barry Bostwick in Rocky Horror. Matters have improved considerably as the reach of the media has.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:29 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mostly listened to this tabbed out of my browser, doing work. But every so often I'd glance back, and think, "wow, I didn't know Dennis Reynolds was an expert on accents!"

Oh also this was pretty great.
posted by explosion at 7:31 AM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

If I want to quibble with it, I want to knock his Rodin's The Thinker pose of discrimination from my screen. The technical references demonstrate a disciplined study, but pantomimes of his "reactions" for scripted material is presentation in itself and ultimately promotional. It's my opinion, the technical references and corresponding examples are just that, examples, and not a full measure. There's an implication that having found an example that can be given a linguistic distinction, a performance is flawed. Not so sure about that. And every accent on Earth seems to be his domain with that musical chord cue for the map.

I'm sure he's a fine coach, if that's his aspiration, because he leans toward constructive criticism with some appropriate and dismissive bookends (Rooney and times thankfully past).
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:33 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

As I started watching this, I thought "This won't be complete without..." then he got to it.

The "it" being Keanu Reeves embarrassing performance in Dracula.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:39 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

Speaking of Hugh Laurie, and "Jeeves and Wooster" - for real fun, watch a British actor in that era and in a relatively low-budget show do an American accent. I'd think "why is that fellow speaking so loudly and acting like an ass?"

Oh. He's a british actor playing an american...
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I wish he'd gone over Kevin Spacey's southern accent in House of Cards, which is so awful I can't watch the show. Yes I know there is some sort of credible claim that's he doing a better job with specific accents from wherever that character is meant to be from but I just don't care that motherfucker sounds like a yankee and if that claim is right then those people in the south sound like yankees putting on an accent too
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:49 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

don't really care for House of Cards for other reasons, and I'm from a different part of the american south, but yes, I think southern politicians often have this "put on" quality to their accent IRL.
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:03 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

So I saw Kiss the Girls, a film set in Durham, NC, in a theater in Durham, NC in 1998. Cary Elwes plays a Durham detective who doesn't like working with the out-of-town profiler played by Morgan Freeman. Elwes played the role with the biggest, hammiest Suthun-frad accent I've ever heard on-screen. I'm sure he played it that way for at least some decent reasons, but the entire theater reacted... poorly.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:06 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Benny Crumbles in Doctor Strange nearly broke me. The accent came and went like... I dunno, something?
posted by blue_beetle at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hugh Laurie's House audition:

Laurie was in Namibia filming Flight of the Phoenix and recorded the audition tape for the show in the bathroom of the hotel, the only place he could get enough light. ... Laurie's American accent was so convincing that executive producer Bryan Singer, who was unaware at the time that Laurie was British, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of compelling American actor he had been looking for.

posted by INFJ at 8:17 AM on November 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

"I'd glance back, and think, "wow, I didn't know Dennis Reynolds was an expert on accents!""

Oh he totally is.
posted by komara at 8:20 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I liked the distinction in the critiques as to whether the actor was playing someone whose actual voice could be studied in order to be authentic. Points off for not doing so. Why would you purposely not work to replicate the real accent if playing someone who can be studied? I'd think the amount of work would be the same- and perhaps less...
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:26 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's this touchingly corny American accent that some British actors do which I actually kind of like, which I associate with John Cleese in Monty Python sketches but I've seen others do.

I feel as though it might have originally been a Victorian-Edwardian impression of Teddy Roosevelt, since it's usually accompanied by a particular teeth-baring smile.
posted by XMLicious at 8:26 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Remember ... Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves?

I remember he didn't even bother trying to have an "accent" at all...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:29 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is my friend Erik, here in the real world! What you can't tell in the video is he is a giant (literally, like over 6' 8" I think?), which helps him look a lot less like Dennis in person.

He's very technical about accents in person too, which does indeed sometimes get frustrating for someone like me who *constantly* mispronounces things. I will gleefully play up my philly around him though, always asking for a glass of wodder.

But it's all good, he's real earnest and is genuinely an expert and excited to talk about this stuff.
posted by malphigian at 8:37 AM on November 18, 2016 [20 favorites]

> "As with all movies set in Boston, I spent less time paying attention to the plot and more time thinking 'that accent is good' or 'yikes, what's that guy doing?'"

Can anyone explain the "forty" bit at 1:42? It sounds perfectly normal to me (which might be because I'm from Boston as much as I'm from anywhere).
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:44 AM on November 18, 2016

Haha man accents. I'm terrible at them, can't mimic, in films I don't notice at all when it's bad or good. People point to performances and so oh that's terrible or they keep falling in and out of it, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you when. It's funny, my mother was an amazing mimic, and could really do accents and voices well. She'd read to us when we were little and switch in and out of different parts, I remember it being like magic. I truly wish I had that talent, but given that I have a hard enough time hearing them, replicating different accents I think is beyond me.
posted by Carillon at 8:47 AM on November 18, 2016

When Stephen King wrote Storm of the Century back in the 1990s it was much-hyped for weeks because it was the first thing he'd written specifically for the screen (vs. adapting from prose) and being a big nerdy fan I was really looking forward to it... and I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes because the downeast Maine accents were all so cringeingly, embarrassingly awful. I can't even make it 30 seconds into the trailer, it's just so terrible. (Whenever I miss listening to my grandparents' lovely Maine accents I listen to Bert and I - Marshall Dodge was not from Maine but got it just about perfect.)
posted by usonian at 8:53 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's the attytood, malphigian!
posted by whuppy at 8:56 AM on November 18, 2016

I could watch this for hours.
posted by Think_Long at 9:03 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Would have liked to see his take on Fargo.

So, related:

Fargo accent and dialect notes

The “Fargo” Accent: A Joke that Never Dies
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:04 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

To me, it has always seemed that Brits have an easier go playing American accents than Americans have playing Brits.

I refer you to David Tennant's completely atrocious American accent. He's pretty good with some regional UK accents but something about his Scottishness just does not mix well with American English. I think the man is an all-around amazing actor but he should be banned from playing an American ever again.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:08 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

That was great. I'd love to see more videos like that one. As much just to learn more about the terminology and in the physicality behind regional differences as for the films themselves. It's something I've often wanted to bring up when discussing film, but don't have a sufficient technical backgrounding to be able to describe what I'm hearing.

(Music commentary does that to me as well, but at least there I can usually find someone with more background in the subject to assist in my thoughts.)
posted by gusottertrout at 9:10 AM on November 18, 2016

To me, it has always seemed that Brits have an easier go playing American accents than Americans have playing Brits.

I have often thought of Gary Oldman as the quintessential example of this, but it seems Oldman (born and raised in London) has become mid-Atlantic and now uses a voice coach to pull off a convincing English accent.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:18 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Remember ... Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves?

I remember he didn't even bother trying to have an "accent" at all...

He tried. There's like two scenes where he tries. And then I think somebody told him to knock it the fuck off.
posted by nubs at 9:19 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

that was a really fun and informative watch. really shows (like he said) how important prep/training is as some actors do a perfect job in one movie but not so much in another...but like farlukar asks, why not hire local?

in that vein a thing that has ALWAYS driven me crazy is the use of a Scottish actor (Sean Connery) in a movie that takes place in fucking SCOTLAND (Highlander!) and they have him play a Spaniard, which he does with imho a pretty terrible accent. why??? WHY?????
posted by supermedusa at 9:27 AM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Man, the Southern accents. The worst is when you've got an English actor trying it--even though they have the same roots, they're incompatible. Like Maggie Smith in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, or Tim Curry (!) In Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo.
posted by skullhead at 9:30 AM on November 18, 2016

That was a really great, interesting watch! Thanks for posting!
posted by ApathyGirl at 9:35 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Massachusetts accents are tough enough that neither Cliff Robertson nor George Clooney even bothered to try. (JFK IIRC met with the fellow before shooting and gave him a pass. Clooney, well, given the money being thrown at him.... I mean, just because Clark Gable balked doesn't make it right.) Cf also by the way, the real Captain Greenlaw, by way of comparison to Ms Mastrantonio.

I'd like to see his take on Charles Laughton as a southern senator. Ditto Robert Mitchum as a southern thug. Speaking of whom, Cape Fear one and two*

I'd also like to see his take on Toby Jones as Capote. Again, for comparison.

Quibbles. There is no southern accent. There's a whole mess of southern accents. Ditto English. Ditto London, come to that.

(*Good doco on the making of cape fear 1 is on youtube.)
posted by BWA at 9:37 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Can anyone tell me where Snake in the Simpsons is meant to come from?
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:40 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

"How's that?"
"Like you're from New York."

I really admired the accent work in American Horror Story: Boston Asylum. That one guard was particularly good, I though.

Can anyone tell me where Snake in the Simpsons is meant to come from?

Australia.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:41 AM on November 18, 2016

The single worst accent in recent memory has got to be Michael Rapaport's "southern" accent for Justified. While he occasionally gets some of the sounds right, a Southern accent should have a lazy quality to it... and he positively hammers every single syllable like he's John Henry trying to split a train rail. It's just spectacularly awful.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ewan McGregor (bless his socks) cannot do an American accent to save his life. I remember a drinking game during college when we were studying phonetics: simply drink every time an actor gets an accent wrong. I got very, very drunk during The Nightwatch. At least in Down with Love Ewan's accent is supposed to be really ropey.
posted by kariebookish at 9:41 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm hanging a target on my back for people to throw tomatoes at me, considering how much hate this show gets here, but The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln's Southern accent is pretty frigging good. And I'm a Southerner who lived in Atlanta for a while.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:44 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

To me, it has always seemed that Brits have an easier go playing American accents than Americans have playing Brits.

Probably because they have to learn a different accent if they are playing someone who grew up two blocks away from them.
posted by srboisvert at 9:45 AM on November 18, 2016 [9 favorites]

While he occasionally gets some of the sounds right, a Southern accent should have a lazy quality to it... and he positively hammers every single syllable like he's John Henry trying to split a train rail.

This is very common with bad accents, I find. Actors will often focus on studying and replicating the sounds when for many accents the timbre and cadence is more important. The Clooney clip from a couple of comments above is a good example, I think, of doing it the other way around. Clooney basically ignores all the "signature sounds", but he still evokes a strong sense of how a Massachusetts fisherman talks.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:47 AM on November 18, 2016

something about his Scottishness just does not mix well with American English

And yet Alan Cumming.
posted by briank at 9:48 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

It seems like we've had the accents on film & tv conversation a dozen times in Chat. But the thing I always complain about is that the particular Southern accent I have--which is an exceptionally common one--seldom gets portrayed on film, because it's not showy enough for actors to want to bother with. Nevertheless, there is a particular Southern urban/suburban accent that is a bit gentler and milder. Check out comedian Nate Bargatze who is a perfect example.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:49 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm hanging a target on my back for people to throw tomatoes at me, considering how much hate this show gets here, but The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln's Southern accent is pretty frigging good. And I'm a Southerner who lived in Atlanta for a while.

Oh, yeah, Andrew Lincoln's accent is definitely not the problem with that show. Same goes for Lauren Cohan, for that matter. Her Georgia farm girl accent feels very natural. I dunno how accurate it is to the region, but it's natural.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:49 AM on November 18, 2016

I'm also fascinated by actors who keep working on their accent during the run of a tv series. In the first few episodes of The Closer, for instance, Kyra Sedgwick's Southern accent sounded a little wobbly. But if you caught an ep a few seasons in, she had it dead to rights.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:52 AM on November 18, 2016

This guy's been practicing. (SYTL)
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:09 AM on November 18, 2016

Can anyone tell me where Snake in the Simpsons is meant to come from?

Valley Boy.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:13 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Possibly equaling Costner's Robin Hood, was Matt Frewer's cringe-inducing Dr. Taggart in Eureka. Was that supposed to be Australian? Good lord, it was horrible.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:16 AM on November 18, 2016

Vox breaks down Kevin Spacey's accent on House of Cards.

I did, in fact, know one legitimately southern man who spoke pretty much just like that. It was in the 1980s in Western Kentucky and he was 75 or so years old. He also walked with a cane and wore a waistcoat, so it felt even then, in that setting, like an affectation.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Alan Cumming is the exception to every rule.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 10:31 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just to bring up Hugh Laurie again, because why not... His House accent is basically James Garner's Rockford.
posted by hanoixan at 10:53 AM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Alan Cumming is the exception to every rule.

In these times, I think the world needs an Alan Cumming/Idris Elba buddy movie.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:59 AM on November 18, 2016 [10 favorites]

Anytime we talk about Hugh Laurie's accent for House my mind goes immediately to here...
posted by neilbert at 11:00 AM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

My favorite: Hugh Laurie playing an American doctor faking a British accent
posted by Rhaomi at 11:19 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Remember ... Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves?

I personally re-titled that movie as "Robin Hoosier: Prince of Thieves."
posted by wenestvedt at 11:43 AM on November 18, 2016

My favorite: Hugh Laurie playing an American doctor faking a British accent yt

Jimmy McNulty's English accent
posted by mama casserole at 11:53 AM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

I thought Kevin Spacey's accent on House of Cards was meant to sound kind of put on and artificial, as though he had tweaked his speech as he was coming up in politics to match the way he imagined members of that class were supposed to sound. Is that a plausible character choice, or is the accent truly so bad as to make that impossible?
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 11:54 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a pity that every male southern accent comes out sounding like Foghorn Leghorn.

My heavily accented southern kin sometimes put on a generically southern-style movie accent just for kicks, and without fail they sound just like Frank Underwood. The layers!
posted by mochapickle at 11:58 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

No matter what you may say about the accuracy of Brad Pitt's accent in Inglourious Basterds, it's worth it just for the bit where he speaks Italian.
posted by ckape at 12:01 PM on November 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Alan Cumming and David Tennant are from completely different parts of Scotland. I'm no expert in Scottish accents, but I'd hazard a guess that their "base" accents are significantly different.
posted by hoyland at 12:18 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

In these times?

In ANY times, mandolinconspiracy.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:37 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Those with a fascination with Boston/Massachusetts accents need to see Black Mass. Its Depp playing serious as an Irish American mobster and his gang are all heavily accented, supposedly from South Boston. However, his brother is played by Cumberbatch, and god alone knows what accent he was using.
posted by biffa at 1:13 PM on November 18, 2016

Virtually no one can get a New Zealand accent right. Too tricky, I guess: people who try end up veering wildly between Aus, English, and Afrikaans, and no one thinks to pay attention to the swampy consonants as well as the pancake-flat vowels. I used to think it couldn't be done, but then I saw Emily Watson in Everest: she nailed it. Not just a generic Kiwi accent, but a sustained, specifically Wellington accent of a woman of a certain age that just never slips. Kudos.
posted by Sonny Jim at 2:10 PM on November 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Worst American accent by a British actor I've heard is Paterson Joseph in Jekyll. He slides between three or four accents in a single sentence.
posted by Lexica at 2:48 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of love right now for Arrival, but I was completely at a loss over Forest Whitaker's accent, where exactly was Colonel Weber supposed to be from?
posted by OHenryPacey at 5:11 PM on November 18, 2016

Kevin Spacey's accent in House of Cards isn't meant to be generic southern. It's a low country accent, which is particular to certain parts of Georgia and South Carolina, e.g. Savannah and Charleston (though probably not Gaffney, which is where the character is supposed to be from).
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:16 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Side story: I once met a woman with an accent very much like Francis Underwood. To make conversation, I asked her where she was from (obviously Savannah). With a completely straight face, in her syrupy southern drawl, she said "Long Island".
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:28 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh god yes, Lexica. Paterson Joseph is awful in that. He sounds like he has never met an American and the only times he's seen one were in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons and one of the Smokey and the Bandit sequels, both of which he watched in a noisy airport bar.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:32 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you like this video, the guy that made it did a Reddit AMA.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:51 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kevin Spacey's accent in House of Cards isn't meant to be generic southern.

Does it work for you, though? I mean, maybe y'all talk like that; I've only ever been to Savannah and Charleston for vacations/conferences. But if that's true, damn do you guys talk an awful lot like a yankee doing a half-assed southern accent.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:03 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I once met a woman with an accent very much like Francis Underwood. To make conversation, I asked her where she was from (obviously Savannah). With a completely straight face, in her syrupy southern drawl, she said "Long Island".

It's possible, I suppose
posted by IndigoJones at 7:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

in that vein a thing that has ALWAYS driven me crazy is the use of a Scottish actor (Sean Connery) in a movie that takes place in fucking SCOTLAND (Highlander!) and they have him play a Spaniard, which he does with imho a pretty terrible accent. why??? WHY?????

The combination of a Frenchman doing a terrible Scottish accent and a Scotsman playing someone with a Spanish name but who was allegedly born in Egypt is one of the many, many things I love about that film, and saying "Pleashed to meet you, I'm Juan Villalobosh Ramiresh......from Egypt" to myself is something I do at least once a year if I need cheering up.

If voice coaching lessons are anything like this video I'd be tempted to take them just for funsies.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:11 PM on November 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Fascinating! Thanks for posting.
posted by hapax_legomenon at 9:19 PM on November 18, 2016

they have him play a Spaniard

Egyptian.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:49 PM on November 18, 2016

Well... Maybe Zeistian.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:50 PM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

So fascinating. Thanks for posting. Could have easily watched an hour more.

I wish he'd gone into more detail on Meryl Streep's Polish accent in Sophie's Choice. It is so amazingly spectacular it's like every one of my relatives rolled into one. Not to mention she acts a portion of the movie in German. She deserved two oscars for that performance.

As poor as he is in accents, I will always have warm fuzzies for Keanu Reeves in anything.

Brad Pitt: inglorious basterds: eye-talian: win!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:09 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really enjoyed Jeffrey Donovan's accent in Fargo (the tv series) season two.

He sounded very close to the way some of the people I grew up around talked, in the Ottawa Valley, when they weren't talking to outsiders. I almost never hear that accent anymore -- even from people who still live in that area.

I kept hoping to hear to him refer to a sofa as a chesterfield, but it didn't happen.
posted by lastobelus at 11:15 PM on November 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Worst accent which doesn't ruin a great performance: Peter Dinklage.
posted by Justinian at 12:08 AM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Russell Crowe in Robin Hood was an interesting exploration of numerous English accents, he must have mixed up at least 4, sadly none of them from the east Midlands.
posted by biffa at 5:08 AM on November 19, 2016

Can't believe we got this far without any accent love for the two Americans who play Nigel Tufnel and David St Hubbins in 'Spinal Tap.'
posted by Coda Tronca at 6:50 AM on November 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

You mean the one american and one British Lord*?

*ok also american
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:58 AM on November 19, 2016

according the imdb Juan Villalobosh Ramiresh was originally scripted as a Spaniard, but then they changed to Egyptian but kept the name, presumably so Jon Mitchell could enjoy hearing Sean Connery say it. this is the new thing I have learned today!
posted by supermedusa at 10:42 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Did anyone have a problem with the volume? The video isn't playing sound for me.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:29 PM on November 19, 2016

I was impressed by Colin Farrell's accent in Fantastic Beasts. There are many odd accents in that movie; his was fine.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:59 PM on November 19, 2016

Some other experts on Irish accents assess some attempts (slyt). Spoiler: the Scots are the worst at getting an Irish accent right. This leaves out the numerous regional accent variations and yet.

Mickey Rourke in Prayer for the Dying tried to emulate a Belfast-area accent only to be told no one could understand him. In other words, too authentic. One expert defends his accent.
posted by datawrangler at 7:02 AM on November 20, 2016

Sonny Jim: "Virtually no one can get a New Zealand accent right."

Mandatory Beached Whale.
posted by brokkr at 1:41 AM on November 21, 2016

Beached Whale

That's hilarious. They're (largely) OK when they stick to "bro" and "chip," but as for the rest of the vowels they try out, well ... I'm not going to comment out of rəspɪct.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:36 AM on November 21, 2016

My TV accent story is that I first saw Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndham-Price on Buffy and Angel. I don't have great ear for accents, so if his British accent was off in any noticeable way, it didn't jump out at me. I assumed for some reason that he was actually British. Then a few years ago I saw him in some other TV show, and I thought his American accent was absolutely atrocious. Like, unlistenable bad.

And then I found out he was American.

I figure it just sounds strange to me because I was so immersed in him as Wesley and any other voice sounds odd to me, but I still dislike hearing his American accent.
posted by Orlop at 5:40 AM on November 24, 2016