Accents

L

Luckey Haskins

New member
It is starting to become an obsession now. I cannot stand actors who kill an accent, even if they get close.

I've just watched 51st State with Robert Carlyle, and even though he got close, his Scouse accent was very hit and miss.

Couldn't they have just used a good Scouse actor? It's not like he's superb anyway.

Any other accents been killed in your memory?
 
Mickey Rourke in A Prayer for the Dying. Started off in Northern Ireland, went for a quick wander round Southern Ireland, popped into Scotland for a couple of minutes before heading back across the Atlantic and home.
 
Accents that have been killed? where do you start? The first that springs to mind are those attempted by Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in Far and Away, Irish people don't sound like that. Similarly for Brad Pitt in the Devils Own, again Irish people don't sound like that.
 
I dont know about his Scouse accent but his Northern Ireland accent was superb in the couple a films I've seen him in.

And as for Nicole and Tom :mad: PLEASE we Irish people just dont speak like that in fact no one speaks like that. :rolleyes:
 
His London accent in Face wasnt all that either. It was probably passable to non-Londoners but didnt help that he was playing alongside real east London actors with genuine accents.
 
In his defence the bad accent was alledgedly deliberate. Cheadle stated in an interview that he was trying to do a cockney accent and started doing Dick Van Dyke's cockerney accent from Mary Poppins to wind up George Clooney. Clooney thought it was hilarious and said that's the one you should use. Although that could just be Cheadle's explanation for it.

For genuinely bad accents, how about the English accent being slaughtered by Rene Zellwegger in Bridget Jones and Keanu Reeves in Dracula.
 
aargh the bloke in LA Confidential (the baddie, can't remember his name)m, his accent drove me mad - i think he was meant to be scottish but made a point of drinking irish whiskey and using the welsh word "boyo" and generally sounded like welsh, irish and scottish accents had been chucked into a melding pot and he'd picked bits of each - drives me mad everytime i see the film, which is a bugger because i love it!
 
As well as the obvious Dick Van Dyke school of cockney acting, I get annoyed by Brits doing bad US accents . I just watched Natasha RicharRABon in Nell ('I'm a big gurrrrlll'!) who was particularly bad, but also Hugh Laurie in Stuart Little - awful drawl.
 
The guy you talk about is called James Cromwell & the role he played was Captain Dudley Smith.
Great movie though

Other bad accents....

Vicki Fowler when she joined Eastenders as an adult
Ewen McGregor's Alec Guiness impression in the latest Star Wars movies
 
The example of this that immediately springs to mind is from TV rather than film, but something that really grates with me is when different members of the same (fictional) family have very different accents. In EastEnders a few years ago, Caroline Paterson, who played Mark Fowler's wife Ruth, had a very broad Glasgow accent but, when they went to Scotland to see her family, her father was a Church of Scotland minister with an educated, fairly posh, Helensburgh (I think) accent. It just wasn't believable that, coming from that family and that background, Ruth would speak the way she did.
 
Oh! Where to start:

First up why is it the only accent Brits can do when trying to play Yanks is this pantomime Southern drawl...? ie. Jude Law, Tim Roth, Ewan Macgregor etc.

Speaking of Ewan Macgregor he deserves a special mention on his own - his super hammy impersonation of Alec Guiness in Star Wars is excruciatingly bad. Even worse his Yank accent in Black Hawk Down, Big Fish and Down With Love all just horrific.

Michael Caine's 'American' accent in Cider House Rules is hilarious. Sean Connery trying to be an Irish New York cop in The Untouchables is just his normal Scottish accent (but heck! American audiences can't tell the difference eh?)

Then there's Spike on Buffy - what accent is that meant to be? ...Buuriiitish?

My personal pet hate is Alien 3. You've got that guy from the Hovis advert and his thick Yorkshire accent. I have nothing against Yorkshire accents but you just can't take him seriously at all, keep thinking of the Hovis music playing in the background whenever he talks!

But the king of all accents will always be Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! Its so bad its actually brilliant!
 
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