I used to think
That american actors could easily do british accents, but didn't think british actors could do american ones. I still get surprised to hear that some actor, Hugh Laurie comes to mind. I feel pretty dumb admitting it, but meh.


Did any of you across the pond ever think the opposite?
EDIT: yes I meant any british accent, be it scottish, welsh, english, irish. I realize that after another post I read. I know the difference but was confusing myself. Thanks for no one ripping me. Btw, aussie accents by anyone but an australian are shit, I agree.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 0:11, 9 replies)

I can tell you that
from the middle here in the antipodes, americans seem to have trouble doing any accent other than american! Oeh neo! A deengoehs gut moy baybee!
( Ratsta, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 0:21, closed)

Case in point
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaMso75ddb8
(oball needs Satan more than he needs me, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 1:26, closed)

Nope
We had a New Yorker in my class at drama school, when she arrived she couldn't say a word in an English accent, last time I saw her was on Xmas day on the BBC in the RSC / David Tennant Hamlet. So there you go. I can do an excellent 'General American' and can get by in auditions where Americans think I'm one of them.... Yay!
(sugar_tits, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 0:29, closed)

Laurie, in an interview, humbly answered that the abundance of American films and television shows made it easy for others to practice Americanisms. He admitted his job is harder if he hears even one UK voice before a taping. Of course, there is just such a worker on the set of House.
( tromboner cherophobia is my kind of fun, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 1:40, closed)

Oh God yes...
Americans actors cant do an Australian accent AT ALL but continually think they can. I interview actors all the time and just last week had one show me how clever he was by impersonating my accent. "Oy jarst woonta neow, haow march looorga..." etc
When he was finished he stopped and gave me a big grin like "See! I'm a genius!".
It took every ounce of willpower not to say "That's nice, now do an Aussie".
( difficultchild, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 2:35, closed)

While I agree
now that I've been living in Canada for a bit, it amazes me how even people who I know have real aussie accents (like my brothers) sound like they're faking it now. I always thought the aussie character in House had a stupid accent, but now my brother sounds exactly like that to me.
(xanthine, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 4:53, closed)

it always amazes me that Americans think that 'British' is an accent...
(antigen is running away from something, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 3:02, closed)

"Can you do a british accent?"
"Which one?"

Confuses the hell out of them when I answer like that.

(it also confuses me when they accuse me of having a British accent - I'm aussie, dammit!)
(xanthine, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 4:54, closed)

Oh that really really winds me up too.
So does someone from Glasgow have the same accent as someone from Guildford? No!
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 20 Mar 2010, 14:16, closed)

Accents
Americans are known to not to be able to do any accent other than American.

Cock-er-knee Dick Van Dyke accents are awful.

Don't even get me started on Oirish accents that they try.

Whereas British actors are normally able to portray a range of accents, whilst playing generic bad guy - Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman etc

I will admit we do have at least two actors I can think of that will have the same accent no matter who they play - Sean Connery and Michael Caine.
(langers, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 12:43, closed)

When Hugh Laurie was auditioning for House
His accent was so convincing that the director held him up as an example of "Just the kind of compelling American actor we need for this role".
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 13:02, closed)

The wife
of the main character in "No country for old men" was also the Glasweigan jailbait in "Trainspotting"
(champagnerocker, Fri 19 Mar 2010, 22:41, closed)

Gwyneth Paltrow...
... is quite good at Brit accents e.g. Sliding Doors, but then she's married to one and she lives here half the time.

James Marsters - Spike from Buffy - is good enough that I was surprised to learn that he wasn't from London.

Brad Pitt did a passable (and largely unintelligible) job in Snatch

But that's about it. Pretty much every other American actor who's achieved any level of fame is more or less useless at Brit accents.

I'm not sure that's true the other way around, certainly given the number of Brit actors working over there in American roles (e.g. half the cast of The Wire, Hugh Laurie, etc.)

But that's not realy the point - you have to be good enough to fool your audience. So a Brit actor playing an American in America, or an American playing a Brit over here (or any non-Aussie playing an Aussie there) needs to be spot on. But an American playing a Brit in an American fillum aimed at an American audience (insert other nationalities as applicable) can sound laughable to us without harming the box office over there at all - witness Dick van Dyke's strangulated yowling in Mary Poppins, or Don Cheadle's fist-itchingly bad turn in Ocean's Eleven.

Cheadle's accent might have been rubbish in Hotel Rwanda too, for all I know, but Rwandans were not the target audience, so his performance was larded with praise by people who wouldn't know a Rwandan accent from a chickenwire fence. Including me.

ASIDE: I do Am Dram here in Britain with an American woman who's lived here for the best part of 20 years and rates herself a good mimic of accent (she has a Masters in Theatre, has tought drama for years, acted and directed and so on). She can do pretty good American regional accents (to my ear) but her vowels are all wrong for British RP (and every other British accent). Which makes me wonder if she's equally bad at the American regional ones and I just don't know any better. She's a damned good director, though.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 16:46, closed)