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So, I was reading about the film Taras Bulba and I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Tony Curtis (w/ his Bronx accent) playing a Ukrainian Cossack (and Yul Brynner's son!)

It got me to thinking -- which accents have been the worst in film history? The criteria:

1) An actor adopting a foreign accent for a part and failing miserably, or

2) An actor playing a character foreign to his or her own homeland and not even bothering to cover up their own native accent.

One that comes to mind immediately:

Kate Hudson in the remake of The Four Feathers w/ Heath Ledger and Wes Bentley. Listening to her attempt an English accent is surely a form of torture!

Your choices?

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Clever post, miliosr.

Keith Carradine in 'The Bachelor'--failure to achieve British accent.

Julia Roberts in 'Michael Collins'--failure to achieve Irish accent.

Jessica Lange in one of the versions of 'Streetcar Named Desire'--failure to achieve Southern accent, or just continued to project Midwesternness, in any case.

Lee Remick as Kay Somersby in TV movie of 'Ike'--failure to achieve British accent.

In the old days, standards weren't nearly so strict. One of the light Garbo romances has her as an Italian opera singer and she uses her more 'European accent' for that. For American roles, she just tones that down, and it's all just fine, she never hits a false note.

Edited to add: That light romance is 'Romance.'

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I have no idea what movie this was or which actors were in it, but I was channel surfing today, and there was an actor and actress playing hotel check-in people in a Reyjavik hotel, and they allegedly had Icelandic accents. (Not).

I don't think Sean Connery tried at all to sound Russian in "The Hunt for Red October".

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I'm bending the rules here a bit because I have no memory for fillm names and tend to mix things up in this area.

"The Llifetime Achievement Awards (the coveted Tin Ear) go to:

-- male actor: Marlon Brando

-- female actor: Anne Bancroft

Or, in their own words: "Lifetime Achievemen' Awawed (the covetid Tin Eah) goes tah ... "

Brando is especially ... er ... "Brandoesque" trying to be British.

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As I recall, some of the attempts at Southern accents in Steel Magnolias were pretty bad. Obviously, the born southerners (Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton) were fine. But the rest of them . . .

Cher's "Italian-American" accent in Moonstruck was fairly ridiculous. But she won an Oscar for it!!! (Or won for Mask, actually.)

Sharon Stone's southern accent in that mid-90s death row prison drama of hers [the name escapes me] was laughable: "If ahm gonna dah, it's gonna be on mah terrrrrmmmmmsssss!"

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As I recall, some of the attempts at Southern accents in Steel Magnolias were pretty bad. Obviously, the born southerners (Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton) were fine. But the rest of them . . .

I'd been thinking of that one too, but recalled how surprised that Shirley MacLaine's was good. She's from Richmond, and there is plenty of Southern that she would have grown up with, although most of it was gotten rid of by the time she was in movies.

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What's Anne Bancroft tin-eared in? I don't remember her doing British, but I haven't seen all of them. Thought that movie 14 Charing Cross Road was awful, but I think she was American in it.
That's where I'm stretching the rules. Wouldn't the Mother Superior in Agnes of God be a Canadian? And her role in 84 Charing Cross Road was foreign, albeit an American in Britain. She always sounds llike herself, even when trying to convey characters of a different class, region, or education level. I regret that I missed her role as Marco Polo's mother in the tv miniseries. (Thank you, imbd.com, for that information!)
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Interesting about Shirley MacLaine. My prime offender in Steel Magnolias is Olympia Dukakis.

How could I forget -- Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments! (No attempt at all to alter his normal speaking voice even though he is participating in a period drama set in ancient Egypt. Of course, so many of the performances/accents in the movie are so off-the-wall that it all becomes great fun.)

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1) I was just about to mention Dukakis, another actress who sails through all sorts of characters always sounding like herself.

2) Re 84 Charing Cross Road, I admit to stretching things here. Even as a literary New York Jewish woman, she sounds somehow "off" -- to me at least. The voice, I mean. It just sounds false given the nature of the words and ideas she is expressing.

Returning to the matter of Americans attempting foreign accents. They usually aim at the kind of posh talk associated with British movie stars of the Olivier/Leigh era. The results are uneven/not so good for the most part. Have there been any American actors who could do this well -- or who could handle non-posh and regional British accents?

Also: what is it about their training that allows so many British actors to work so convincingly (often impeccably) in so many kinds of American accents? I'm thinking especially of Anthony Hopkins, but there are many others. Conversely, why are so few American actors able to to the same in the opposite direction?

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British actors have more technique. Vanessa could always do fine American accents of various kinds, as in 'Isadora' and Italian-American in 'Orpheus Descending'. I can't think of any Americans even able to do the posh talk that well, but the Australian Coral Browne could do it as well as Penelope Keith and Edith Evans, except nobody has ever equalled Edith Evans in anything! She and Joan Greenwood are the greatest mother and daughter pair in history, I watched 'importance of Being Earnest' again the other day, and I love it more every time.

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I don't think Sean Connery tried at all to sound Russian in "The Hunt for Red October".
He gets a pass. He's Sean Connery. :)
I'd been thinking of that one too, but recalled how surprised that Shirley MacLaine's was good. She's from Richmond, and there is plenty of Southern that she would have grown up with, although most of it was gotten rid of by the time she was in movies.
Raised in Arlington, though, wasn't she? Which is quite a different milieu (although maybe not when she was a youngster . . . in this life). But I once heard an actress from the south (probably Elizabeth Ashley, but I won't swear to it) complain about non-southern actors employing a generic southern accent no matter their character's origin. A Tennesseean is not going to sound much like a Cajun, so whatever vague southernness MacLaine may have grown up amidst, it would not have fit her Louisiana character. I don't remember, but did MacLaine sound convincingly Louisianan in Steel Mags?
How is an American in Britain foreign?
Foreign to the Brits, not to Yanks. :)
[W]hat is it about their training that allows so many British actors to work so convincingly (often impeccably) in so many kinds of American accents? I'm thinking especially of Anthony Hopkins, but there are many others.
I think this is recent. I remember watching British tv in the 70s and 80s and being embarrassed by the actors' attempts to sound American. But I guess the drama schools figured this was a demand that cried to be met. The English ear hears many more accents in the course of a day than an American one does, so maybe, like their fictional compatriate 'Enry 'Iggins, they are more sensitive to the subtleties between variants of one accent group.

Whoooopsie! :dunno: Came to this thread to see if anyone had listed Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon. What accent there was to start with wasn't very good, wasn't consistent in its diction and sometimes vanished altogether. I suggest Marlon turn over his Lifetime Achievement award to Ryan.

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Raised in Arlington, though, wasn't she? Which is quite a different milieu (although maybe not when she was a youngster . . . in this life). But I once heard an actress from the south (probably Elizabeth Ashley, but I won't swear to it) complain about non-southern actors employing a generic southern accent no matter their character's origin. A Tennesseean is not going to sound much like a Cajun, so whatever vague southernness MacLaine may have grown up amidst, it would not have fit her Louisiana character. I don't remember, but did MacLaine sound convincingly Louisianan in Steel Mags?

Arlington, where I've spent some time, does have, like Washington, plenty of Southern accents in it (believe me, I was surprised), even though there are more cosmopolitan ones there. I was last in New Orleans in 2005 and there were accents there that sound much as they do throughout the Deep South, although not Cajun. I know what you mean about a 'generic Southern accent', it's just that this usually is surprisingly applicable for a film that was based on an off-Broadway play in any case. Gregory Peck in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' had little beyond a superficial bit of basic upper-class Southern (and that wouldn't even really be appropriate for Harper Lee's small town.) Christopher Reeve played an aristocratic Southerner in 'The Bostonians' and his accent was much more like George Wallace or some used-car salesman. But what Ashley said is something that's very meaningful anyway, because Joanne Woodward has done all sorts of Southern accents, and she has one of the best ears of all. She can do Arkansas, she can do Georgia, Mississippi, and you can hear the differences. Surprisingly, Lee Remick was able to do some good Southern accents even though she was from Springfield, Mass. Texas accents definitely also differ from Deep South ones, and especially Dallas ones, because there is desire to be like New York there, and one of the Dallasite accents is very peculiar, they use the Northern 'long I' in a way that it sticks out from the rest of the speech. Then nowadays there are actors from the South like Julianne Moore who I have never heard use a recognizable Southern accent. But Ann-Margret and Angie Dickinson can both do good ones (the latter being especially unexpected, and I think she only does it once.) Sally Field also very good with the Southern accent in 'Norma Rae', as was Sissy Spacek in literally anything (but she's from Texas and lives there most of the time anyway. I'd say Spacek has a terrific ear, and her accent for 'Coal Miner's Daughter' was very impressive.)

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A performance I saw recently springs to mind: Leonardo di Caprio in Blood Diamond. His Boer accent veered from Texas to LA to the Bronx to something approaching geographically correct.

He probably wasn't bad in the role but I couldn't get over the accent(s).

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Connery is always something of a special case. As 007, the Scottish accent was fine; after all "Bond" can be a Scottish name, but in The Longest Day he was playing a soldier named "Flanagan". Same accent. Now there were "Scotch-Irish", but I don't believe that there were many "Erse-Scots" since the days of St. Columba!

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I'm embarrassed to admit I saw that regrettable little movie "Penelope" starring Christina Ricci and James McAvoy. I only saw it because I think he's brilliant and have seen everything he's been in since "The Last King of Scotland". But for some unknown reason in "Penelope", which is set in London, nearly all the British/Scots actors are attempting American accents. It was if someone said, "Here's a little movie no one will see, come on board and try out your American accent." Well I still love James and it wasn't that the accent was bad exactly, it just didn't sound like his voice at all. Could it have been dubbed? I think he has an action movie coming out with Angelina Jolie. Saw a trailer recently and it sounded like another American accent. Hope it goes better this time.

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A performance I saw recently springs to mind: Leonardo di Caprio in Blood Diamond. His Boer accent veered from Texas to LA to the Bronx to something approaching geographically correct.
And what about his Louis XIV in Man in the Iron Mask? His voice and tone: Not regal, not French, not villainous, not modulated, not ... anything. A blah, petulant Valley Boy on Valium.

Carbro raised the matter of "drama schools." My impression is that those who go to the best American schools -- as distinct from taking acting classes at someone's studio, or working your way up the commercial-to-soap opera - to tv series - to feature film route -- are better now than ever before. I'm limited in my references, but I was very imnpressed by members of the Actors' Company and Aquila Theater Company I've seen recently, and performers such as Meryl Streep and Kenneth Kline. Glen Close's Mme de Merteuil in Liaisons Dangereuse was a model of approrpriately accentless accent, very suited to class, period, and tone of the character and piece. While stars, these performers are "character actors" first of all.

Graduates of good university drama schools are trained in a broad range of classics. They know their history and are not trapped in a perpetual and superficial present (though, of course, they can do "contemporary" very well). They are, in general, better educated and more knowledgeable about culture in the great big world outside the U.S. entertainment industry.

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Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stroker's Dracula is a delicious dish of overripe accents. Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder's posh Brit accents are on the same level as any small town high school drama kid. Anthony Hopkins fairs no better with his German Van Helsing accent, although I suspect he meant it to sound that way as his whole performance is so broad and over the top weird. Actually you could say that about the movie as a whole. Although I do love Gary Oldman's performance. He manages to make a Transylvanian accent sound so rich, romantic and poetic.

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Bart, I agree that the level of American Acting has improved enormously. There are many Juilliard grads among the best.

I was impressed reading an interview with Laura Linney in which she explained that she waited to decide her accent in John Adams until she heard that of her "husband" and then she made hers a degree or two more refined as Abigail was at least a degree or two above his social level.

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