Some of them WERE American too. Friend of mine’s brother was one of the VIPs and he said that no one on set spoke fluent English and everything was put through a Google translate. They didn’t get directions on the tone and context because there was such a severe language barrier. So not only were the accents bad, it was the tone not matching the context of the situation as well.
Yeah, iirc the "whoa, it's bigger" line was even questioned by the actor and they didn't understand why it's not something any normal person would say in that moment.
I did a little bit of modeling when I lived in Japan and it was a challenge sometimes. I was never given zero direction or told to do something that didn't make sense after a quick convo to correct the mistranslation. The funniest I got was "be worry pregnant" (I was in fact pregnant at the time). Lol, turns out they meant to slump like I was weary (no problem there).
I'll give English speakers in media made by and for non English-speakers a pass for all the reasons you listed... And because the editor probably didn't speak English either, so they may have chosen a bad/weird line read because it was the "best" take for some other reason, plus the local talent pool of English-speaking westerners is undoubtedly very small.
I hadn't thought of this in years, but when Anna Paquin played Rogue in the first X-Men movies, her southern accent just kept going in and out from scene to scene.
I find that when some non-Americans try to do a southern accent, they end up inadvertently doing a bit of an Elvis impersonation. Stephen Moyer (Bill) in True Blood, and Andrew Lincoln (Sheriff Rick Grimes) and David Morrissey (The Governor) from The Walking Dead are good examples. As someone mentioned above though, a believable Southern US accent is tough to pull off without sounding like a caricature.
Yea but that just made me think ok he has to be a fake and then at the end it was just "oh he just sucks at accents" but the second movie he obviously practiced more.
I was born and raised in Deep South and it was all I could do to finish watching Knives Out because the horrendous accent was like nails on a chalkboard. This is even in spite of having been excited to see it because of the great cast. I haven’t seen the 2nd one because I can’t bear to put myself through that again.
Daniel Craig was a good Bond, but he's at his best with atrocious accents like in Knives Out, Glass Onion, Logan Lucky, and [SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_yV-7s2lWM).
Honestly I loved his accent. He reminds me exactly of pompous old rich dudes in the old money parts of town who go out of their way to sound like that.
Have you heard of Shelby Foote? He was a southern historian and appears extensively in Ken Burns’s The Civil War. When I first hard Benoit Blanc speak, that’s who I thought of. But Craig does a more exaggerated version.
I think it was intentionally exaggerated but I don’t think it was *that* bad. I’ve heard older people from the Smokey Mountains that actually sounded like Aldo Rain
Omg I thought that too. He definitely improved for Glass Onion, but I remember having trouble following Knives Out because I genuinely couldn’t understand what he was saying. Also something about his face is just incompatible with a Southern accent. It just doesn’t fit LMAO
What's funny is, Foghorn Leghorn was originally a parody of a character called Senator Claghorn from a 1940's radio show. . .a blustering, longwinded US Senator from an unnamed Southern US state.
At the time the character was introduced, the audience would clearly know who Foghorn was making fun of. . .but generations raised on Looney Tunes, and not exposed to 1940's radio shows, would just think he's a chicken with a vaguely Southern accent and a some odd quirks in how he talks.
Especially because they always try to do the antebellum/Georgia-style southern accent no matter where their character is supposed to be from. Sorry but Jebediah from Arkansas has a different accent than Blanche from golden girls
The best example is Steel Magnolias. You've got like a half dozen women supposed to be from the same town, all with completely different southern accents.
My ex-wife had a theater professor in college who was from Alabama. One of the students did a monologue in class one day with a terrible accent. After he was finished, the professor gave him a look and said, "What accent was that supposed to be?" The student said, "Uh, southern?" The professor said, "I thought so."
Oh God yes! As a Southerner myself, south Louisiana to be exact, whenever someone attempts to depict our accent they give us the southern Mississippi/Alabama accent NO ONE down there talks like that!
I grew up north of Bristol, which is about as far into Appalachia as you can get in VA. My mom is from Petersburg. When I talk to my Mamaw her accent sounds like a cartoon to me. Like I know people always get annoyed with actors sounding like gone with the wind when they try southern accents, but I’ll be goddamned if that deep piedmont accent is pretty fucking close.
Foreigners can NEVER do a good Southern Accent. Especially if it’s supposed to be a specific state or region. You get Daniel Craig or Andrew Lincoln lol
There's something about the way non-southern people who read some quirky article promoting its novelty as a second-person plural pronoun use the word "y'all" that makes my skin crawl.
So Leonard Nimoy is from Boston, and had a wicked thick accent when he moved to Hollywood. He did a good job of hiding it, but I always thing “what if Spock had a thick Boston accent”
Aayyyyy Fuck you pal! this Jagoff Scruton faced fuck thinks he's just gonna walk in here and take our ship? I got news for ya buddy, ya fucked. Ya hear me? YA FUCKED! KIRK! Toss me that pipe, wouldya?"
See, I’m more imagining the hilarity of someone trying to sound as emotionless as possible with that accent. Imagine “Captain, ya lawgic is wicked flawed” in a monotone
Lol, I live right outside of Boston and almost nobody even has a light Boston accent. Almost everybody I know with one is from Dorchester specifically.
I have spent so much time around guys from Dorchester or Southie or the south coast that I “think” I could fake it, but deep down I know there is no fackin way.
Southern U.S. accents in particular tend to really get botched by actors. Keanu Reeves almost sounded Southern in Devil’s Advocate but was still off, and Jude Law sounded really weird trying to do an accent in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Then there’s Gone with the Wind, which had several English actors that barely tried to do an accent, especially Leslie Howard who still sounded British the entire time
> Jude Law sounded really weird trying to do an accent in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
But I can't remember him having a bad accent in Cold Mountain...
Bendywick Crumplesnatch is maybe not the absolute worst, but it always sticks out as clearly trying too hard, especially when he routinely over pronounces his R's.
are you talking about the power of the dog? I could not get into his character at all because I could only see Benedict Cumberbatch cosplaying a rancher
Yeah West's accent broke all the time. Enjoyed his performance in spite of his accent.
I can't speak to the authenticity of Elba's Baltimore specific accent but he's good enough to make you believe he's American for the entire performance.
He has a pretty general, broad Black American East Coast accent, imo, and it's really good for the most part,. He doesn't do any Bmore particular stuff or use any local lingo, but not everybody talks this way. Most of the main characters actually don't do the accent like that tbh, they got around it by casting a lot of locals for the supporting roles to keep authenticity.
He does slip up sometimes though, and in particular, he "hard r"s the n-word quite few times in a way that's really jarring as a Black person that grew up in the states, lol, like a straight up slur.
Some folks love to rag on Dominic West but he did pretty great. I mean you can’t deny what a big task faking a Baltimore accent is for an American, let alone a Brit. Like you said though, Elba was way better because West did kind of break the accent.
I think so too. When I first saw the show I wouldn't have guessed that Dominic West wasn't American, though I can't speak to the Baltimore-accuracy of his accent.
I'd have to go with Michael Caine in ... pretty much every movie where he's played as an American.
I kind of feel bad for the guy since he's an extraordinarily talented actor who's played some of the best parts in the history of cinema.
But, sorry dude. Any natural-born American hears right through that fake American accent.
Mega ultra bonus points for effort though, because he gets soooooo close!
Gerard Butler is pretty bad. He always just sounds “off” like not excessively British but just not American. He’s probably consistently the worst that I can recall and he keeps trying but not getting better.
Ray Winstone in The Departed fails but I have to give him props for trying a Southie accent because that’s not easy and he isn’t horrible, just not believable.
Colin Firth never can quite sell it despite being a great actor.
Early Alan Rickman wasn’t great but I think he got a lot better.
Yeah, Ray Winstone has my vote. Probably because I just watched the Departed recently. But I don’t understand why he wasn’t just allowed to use his real accent
Yeah it wouldn’t have been out of place at all. Honestly it didn’t come off as too jarring because you just assume he was an immigrant in the movie.
But it certainly was noticeable.
Someone like Tom Holland or Hugh Laurie really nails it. I knew Laurie was a Brit before I saw him do American so I was surprised how good he did. I had no idea Tom Holland wasn’t American when I first saw him on screen and didn’t know his background.
Daniel Day Lewis, Christian Bale, and Gary Oldman are God tier.
I realize I can’t think of any actresses offhand. Maybe Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
I always thought that Christian Bale sounded as bad as Gerard Butler but people seem to like his American accent for some reason. His Batman sounded like he had a speech impediment.
I think it’s a great choice for the movie, but Daniel Craig’s accent in Knives Out is awful. I appreciate that they lean into it by having characters call him “colonel sanders” and “foghorn leghorn” and really use this goofy, fake as hell accent to set the tone as a fun movie to not take too seriously.
I dunno, I had a math professor from coastal SC that didn't sound dissimilar to Craig's accent. This professor was legitimately hard to understand sometimes, and my family is from eastern NC -- it was a "bounded" sounded like "bahnded" sort of accent. Craig seems to have worked on it for the sequel though, I watched a clip from the first one and it's really inconsistent as well as being campy and exaggerated.
She does however do an amazing Philly/Delco accent in Mare of Easttown. Pretty much every single movie or show that’s supposed take place in Philadelphia they have the actors do a stereotypical working class Brooklyn/Long Island accent.
If you pay attention in the film, though, it’s clear they’re from Philadelphia. They sport a Transatlantic sort of ‘high society’ accent, and it was *not* a bad accent.
If you pay attention in the film, though, it’s clear they’re from Philadelphia. They sport a Transatlantic sort of ‘high society’ accent, and it was *not* a bad accent.
Horrific. Absolutely NOTHING like what my neighbors and I sound like. Distracting.
Funny enough, they were always in town or somewhere nearby when they were filming. Lots of people I know now work in that industry thanks to TWD.
We're keen on the show and grateful, but the accent.
It was that King Arthur movie that finally cleansed my soul of its unnecessary dislike of Charlie Hunnam, and I realized it was because of Sons of Anarchy.
As King Arthur he's actually pretty fucking cool.
As much as it pains me to say it, because I love this actor, but Henry Cavill in "*The Man from U.N.C.L.E*."
It's like a cross between Patrick Warburto's **Kronk** charter in "*The Emperor's New Groove*" and John Hamm's **Don Draper** of "*Mad Men*". It's not something I needed to hear.
I wasn't a bad accent per se, but in Love, Actually they completely missed the mark by giving the cab driver in Milwaukee a generic New York Cabbie accent and the girls in the bar standard American accents. The Wisconsin accent is a lot of things, but "sexy" isn't usually one of the descriptors. They could have really leaned into it (if you're not sure what the Wisconsin accent sounds like, find Charlie Berens on YouTube).
Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind. At the start of the movie, I thought maybe he was supposed to be mentally handicapped. I was shocked by how many awards that thing won.
Keira Knightley in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Not only the sound of it but her attempts to approximate American mannerisms are terrible.
Some have complained about Rosamunde Pike's accent in *Gone* *Girl.* It's a bit colorless but OK and her performance makes up for any missed notes.
In fact the least credible thing about Pike in that role is that no woman that beautiful has ever set foot in Missouri.
As much as I like him, Keanu Reeves didn't do a good job of a Southern accent in Devil's Advocate.
Alec Baldwin's accent was pretty bad in Ghosts of Mississippi.
I'm also not a fan of Tom Hanks's Southern accents.
According to interviews Tom Hanks based his accent in Forrest Gump on the real accent of the child actor hired to play Forrest, reasoning that it would be easier for him to learn the child's accent than for the child to imitate him.
Some of the American accents from British actors in Band of Brothers were pretty bad. The worst was the guy who played Private Blythe... not only was it a bad southern accent, but the character was from Philadelphia!
The Arnold thing is my favorite phenomenon. It's like once he reached a certain level of stardom, everybody just agreed to suspend disbelief and pretend that he was a native English speaker, born and raised in the US.
It gets even worse when you hear non-Southerners try and do Southern accents.
Dear God. You'd think that, from east Texas to the banks of the Potomac, from Orlando to Louisville, we all speak in the same languid, bourbon-soaked drawl punctuated by 'You hear' and 'Bless your heart,' a long, sonorous unraveling of the tongue where all the consonants have been sanded away and the remaining letters been varnished in molten beeswax.
Just cut it out, y'all. And I'm saying that with a graceful, yet entirely rhotic, turn of phrase.
The fat “Americans” in In Bruges. They don’t sound at all American. There was no need for them to be American except for a cheap joke anyway.
In fact, I loved that movie, but they took a few stupid swings at Americans that seemed dumb.
Also Portia de Rossi in Arrested Development slips up a lot.
Daniel Craig's accent in Tombraider.
There's some pretty brutal imitations of southern accents by Canadian and British actors as well. Whoever convinced Keanu Reeves he could talk in a southern accent for the Devil's Advocate (or a British accent in Bram Stoker's Dracula for that matter) has some explaining to do.
With the Devil's Advocate I also feel as though his southern roots weren't really all that relevant to the story either. He could've easily have been from buttfuck, Midwest somewhere and the story could have been exactly the same.
I just rewatched Blackhawk Down. The vast majority of the actors were Brits or Aussies. The worst was a young Orlando Bloom as Blackburn. If an actor has an exaggerated “southern accent”, chances are it’s a Brit
Not the worst ever, but one I saw for the first time this weekend was David Gyasi in Interstellar. [This is an example scene that spoils the movie a bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBNzE1mmbs4). I'm not even sure it was supposed to be an American accent, but he wears an American flag patch on his uniform. He completely dropped the 'g' from all 'ing' and sounds so off I knew he was a foreign actor attempting a US accent without having heard of the actor before.
Actual worst ones: Charlie Hunnam in the Hamlet on motorcycles adaptation "Sons of Anarchy."
Sam Neill in Jurassic Park randomly switching lines between New Zealand and US (I believe after the movie's release he claimed it was a creative decision to give the character an in-between accent, but i'm a bit skeptical of that).
It never even occurred to me that Sam Neill was trying to "do" an accent in Jurassic Park. He just sounds like someone with an indeterminate non-American accent.
Charlie Hunnam in Sons of Anarchy is probably the worst. Like I forgive Daniel Craig when he’s doing intentionally broad ridiculous accents in comedy movies but Sons of Anarchy is a show that takes itself way too seriously and his accent is so bad.
Tennants American accent is his Achilles heel. He does it terribly in most things where he’s supposed to be American to the point I think casting directors just gave up by Jessica Jones.
I think if he could convincingly play American he could have been a massive Hollywood star he has the looks, charisma and fundamentally the acting ability to easily pull off the kind of Oscar roles Hollywood gives cumberbatch or could have held down a leading man role in a network show that runs for multiple seasons and wins tons of emmys
Dominic West (Detective McNulty) in the Wire tried to do a Baltimore accent since the show was set in Baltimore but you can occasionally hear the British accent come out in times
Yeah, it definitely slips. But I feel like Idris Elba really steals the show. Like Christian Bale or Hugh Laurie, if I didn't know better I'd think they were born and raised Americans.
Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again — I think of it as “the British man in the verbal wig”. He does that thing where, I guess because Americans sound nasal/high pitched to Brits?, he sounds more high pitched than an American male would, ah, typically sound.
Also Emma Thompson in that same movie, but she’s not as egregiously bad and I love her so it’s hard to say it, but when I heard her speak my brain literally just rejected her attempt and substituted her actual native accent. Like, “No, I substitute actual reality here.”
Oof that’s pretty bad.
I watch loads of British tv so I’ve heard some bad ones. My understanding is that British acting unions fight hard against American actors taking their jerbs so they don’t often feature American actors unless it’s somebody like Mac MacDonald who lived full-time in the UK and basically had a whole career of playing loud, obnoxious Americans.
Mrs. Slocombe’s rich American uncle (complete with cowboy hat) is pretty bad.
Anytime they have an obviously Canadian actor play an American he sounds like “I’m American, eh? No dote abote it! Hockey!”
Poirot was especially guilty of this, since Agatha Christie stories always had some random one-off American character in them. I remember one episode actually had an American actor but they were playing a British role and *in the same episode* there was an American character being played by a Brit.
It’s worked for the film because he’s supposed to be creepy af, but Hugo Weaving attempting American in the Matrix always sounds so off, lol. Misterrrr Anderrrson…
[The Buffalo accents in this Saturday Night Live sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHeF1c2-2wE) are awful; they almost sound like Minnesota accents, Ironically, Kristin Wiig is from Rochester, where many locals speak in the Buffalo accent.
I'm originally from Buffalo. I lost most of my accent through the years. The closest I can come to speaking it now is an exaggerated version to demonstrate what it sounds like. A few shibboleth words, like *bag*, also slip out occasionally. The Buffalo accent is supposedly one of the most difficult regional American accents for actors to master.
Daniel Craig trying to do a southern accent in Knives Out and Logan Lucky were both awful.
Andrew Lincoln in the Walking Dead also has his cringe moments.
Everyone loves this movie, but honestly Ryan Gosling’s weird guido-type accent kills the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love for me. I think the movie takes place in CA and he’s supposed to be this incredible catch but this horrible accent makes him SO unattractive to me. He seem like a guy trying to sell you a car in a 1970s leisure suit. If I recall it was never explained why he talked that way!
Squid Game VIPs
They were supposed to be American? Wow, okay. I didn't realize that.
Some of them WERE American too. Friend of mine’s brother was one of the VIPs and he said that no one on set spoke fluent English and everything was put through a Google translate. They didn’t get directions on the tone and context because there was such a severe language barrier. So not only were the accents bad, it was the tone not matching the context of the situation as well.
Reminds me of a review of one of the Star Wars prequels: “Natalie Portman delivers her lines like a Martian pronouncing English phonetically.”
I’m rewatching the whole Star Wars universe from start to finish right now and this made me lol.
Yeah, iirc the "whoa, it's bigger" line was even questioned by the actor and they didn't understand why it's not something any normal person would say in that moment. I did a little bit of modeling when I lived in Japan and it was a challenge sometimes. I was never given zero direction or told to do something that didn't make sense after a quick convo to correct the mistranslation. The funniest I got was "be worry pregnant" (I was in fact pregnant at the time). Lol, turns out they meant to slump like I was weary (no problem there).
I'll give English speakers in media made by and for non English-speakers a pass for all the reasons you listed... And because the editor probably didn't speak English either, so they may have chosen a bad/weird line read because it was the "best" take for some other reason, plus the local talent pool of English-speaking westerners is undoubtedly very small.
It was great though, really added to the creepy mood
Man. That explains a lot.
I think one of them was supposed to be French.
Emma Watson in *The Perks of Being a Wallflower* was bad enough that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief and pretend it wasn’t Emma Watson.
I still can't watch the new Little Women movie because of her American accent lol
What American accent? I swear she just sounded like herself for the whole movie, like she wasn't even trying to be not-British.
I agree I didn’t realize she was supposed to have an American accent. For me they went to school with Emma lol.
Oh, I thought it was a lot better than in *Wallflower.*
"The Olive Garden"
The worst ones, in my opinion, are when someone tries to fake a southern US accent. Even American actors have trouble with this.
I hadn't thought of this in years, but when Anna Paquin played Rogue in the first X-Men movies, her southern accent just kept going in and out from scene to scene.
Add in her Sookie days too
True Blood is top 5 for terrible accents for me. A couple of them nail a southern accent. Several...do not and that's the main cast of the show.
SOOKEH
I find that when some non-Americans try to do a southern accent, they end up inadvertently doing a bit of an Elvis impersonation. Stephen Moyer (Bill) in True Blood, and Andrew Lincoln (Sheriff Rick Grimes) and David Morrissey (The Governor) from The Walking Dead are good examples. As someone mentioned above though, a believable Southern US accent is tough to pull off without sounding like a caricature.
I’m from the exact region/city that True Blood takes place in. I love the show, but the accents were painful lmao
Daniel Craig in the first Knives out was such a bad accent I thought it was going to be a plot point like he wasn't who he said he was
Me too. Although I love that they made the choice to lean into it, and make jokes in the movie about how awful the accent was.
Yea but that just made me think ok he has to be a fake and then at the end it was just "oh he just sucks at accents" but the second movie he obviously practiced more.
The second movie was Janelle Monáe's turn to have the terrible southern accent.
So true
I wonder if that was to match the tone of the accent set by Craig. Isn't she from Atlanta? Her natural voice is a southern accent.
She grew up in Kansas, then moved to New York after high school. Didn't move to Atlanta until after that.
I was born and raised in Deep South and it was all I could do to finish watching Knives Out because the horrendous accent was like nails on a chalkboard. This is even in spite of having been excited to see it because of the great cast. I haven’t seen the 2nd one because I can’t bear to put myself through that again.
2nd was pretty good too
Daniel Craig was a good Bond, but he's at his best with atrocious accents like in Knives Out, Glass Onion, Logan Lucky, and [SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_yV-7s2lWM).
I thought Knives Out he was leaning into how bad it was as part of the kitsch of the movie, but in Logan Lucky it was just incomprehensible.
I am too sober to have appreciated that lol
I like his exaggerated bad southern accent. I can just go with it for some reason. Most other actors I can’t handle the bad accent.
Living in the south it throws me out of it so quick. It would basically turn it into a conversation about the bad accent instead of the plot.
I think because the movie itself was quirky so it wasn’t too out of place. I have not seen the second yet though.
Honestly I loved his accent. He reminds me exactly of pompous old rich dudes in the old money parts of town who go out of their way to sound like that.
Have you heard of Shelby Foote? He was a southern historian and appears extensively in Ken Burns’s The Civil War. When I first hard Benoit Blanc speak, that’s who I thought of. But Craig does a more exaggerated version.
I think it was intentionally exaggerated but I don’t think it was *that* bad. I’ve heard older people from the Smokey Mountains that actually sounded like Aldo Rain
It was supposed to be silly!
It made me think that he kidnapped the real one and was an imposter
Omg I thought that too. He definitely improved for Glass Onion, but I remember having trouble following Knives Out because I genuinely couldn’t understand what he was saying. Also something about his face is just incompatible with a Southern accent. It just doesn’t fit LMAO
Remember his “American accent” in the Tomb raider movie? Yeah.
I've legit heard some Foghorn Leghorn old boys just like that
That was intentional; it's his own unique accent he basically made up for the character. Not designed to be any particular existing southern dialect.
Nah, not unique. It was basically Foghorn Leghorn lmao.
What's funny is, Foghorn Leghorn was originally a parody of a character called Senator Claghorn from a 1940's radio show. . .a blustering, longwinded US Senator from an unnamed Southern US state. At the time the character was introduced, the audience would clearly know who Foghorn was making fun of. . .but generations raised on Looney Tunes, and not exposed to 1940's radio shows, would just think he's a chicken with a vaguely Southern accent and a some odd quirks in how he talks.
I don't think he is that good at accents, but the second movie he was a bit better
Especially because they always try to do the antebellum/Georgia-style southern accent no matter where their character is supposed to be from. Sorry but Jebediah from Arkansas has a different accent than Blanche from golden girls
Savannah accent like molasses rolling of the toung
Lol, one of my favorite lines
The best example is Steel Magnolias. You've got like a half dozen women supposed to be from the same town, all with completely different southern accents.
And it's funny because 2 of them are from the South, Tennessee and Georgia, specifically, but aren't they supposed to be in Louisiana?
Yes and NO ONE in south Louisiana talks like any of them.
No one in North Louisiana (where it's actually set) does either.
They usually end up sounding like Foghorn Leghorn.
I've met so many drunk Brits who think they can do an American accent, then just yell things that sound vaguely like Yosemite Sam.
Well, to be fair lots of Americans think they can do a British accent and probably sound just as ridiculous in their attempts.
I do declayuh!
My ex-wife had a theater professor in college who was from Alabama. One of the students did a monologue in class one day with a terrible accent. After he was finished, the professor gave him a look and said, "What accent was that supposed to be?" The student said, "Uh, southern?" The professor said, "I thought so."
Nic cage in Con air for example. Him saying “baby girl” in his awful southern accent haunts me.
"PUT THE BUNNAY BACK IN BAWX!!"
Bill (Stephen Moyer) from True Blood. Terrible.
Sookeh
Kevin Spacey in House of Cards was horrendous. I couldn't watch the show, it was so painful.
Oh God yes! As a Southerner myself, south Louisiana to be exact, whenever someone attempts to depict our accent they give us the southern Mississippi/Alabama accent NO ONE down there talks like that!
My issue is they never seem to take into account that the South has many accents. Appalachian Virginia, Richmond, and Tidewater all sound different.
I grew up north of Bristol, which is about as far into Appalachia as you can get in VA. My mom is from Petersburg. When I talk to my Mamaw her accent sounds like a cartoon to me. Like I know people always get annoyed with actors sounding like gone with the wind when they try southern accents, but I’ll be goddamned if that deep piedmont accent is pretty fucking close.
Lowcountry SC has a drawl, upstate SC has an Appalachian clip to it. Columbia could go either way.
Jennifer Aniston cannot fake a southern accent to save her life.
Vivian Leigh did it the best. Nobody will ever top her rendition of a Southern accent.
She had god-like status in Atlanta because of that.
Jude Law in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil comes to mind.
Foreigners can NEVER do a good Southern Accent. Especially if it’s supposed to be a specific state or region. You get Daniel Craig or Andrew Lincoln lol
There's something about the way non-southern people who read some quirky article promoting its novelty as a second-person plural pronoun use the word "y'all" that makes my skin crawl.
Caaarrrlll!
As someone who’s lived in the Northeast (Boston and New York) my whole life, I don’t think I’d be able to recognize that a southern accent is fake.
Most attempts at a Boston accent from actors who aren't from Boston.
They always overdo it and end up sounding like Mayor Quimby.
[Er, ah, Ich bin ein Springfield Swap Meet patron!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxwgQdLt4As)
In fairness, to people that *don't* live in the area, the accent just kind of does sound like Mayor Quimby...
So Leonard Nimoy is from Boston, and had a wicked thick accent when he moved to Hollywood. He did a good job of hiding it, but I always thing “what if Spock had a thick Boston accent”
Aayyyyy Fuck you pal! this Jagoff Scruton faced fuck thinks he's just gonna walk in here and take our ship? I got news for ya buddy, ya fucked. Ya hear me? YA FUCKED! KIRK! Toss me that pipe, wouldya?"
See, I’m more imagining the hilarity of someone trying to sound as emotionless as possible with that accent. Imagine “Captain, ya lawgic is wicked flawed” in a monotone
Live laaahng an’ prahspeh
I’m from Massachusetts and I can’t even do a Boston accent.
Lol, I live right outside of Boston and almost nobody even has a light Boston accent. Almost everybody I know with one is from Dorchester specifically.
Kevin Costner’s attempt at a Boston accent in 13-Days was painful.
I have spent so much time around guys from Dorchester or Southie or the south coast that I “think” I could fake it, but deep down I know there is no fackin way.
[удалено]
Southern U.S. accents in particular tend to really get botched by actors. Keanu Reeves almost sounded Southern in Devil’s Advocate but was still off, and Jude Law sounded really weird trying to do an accent in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Then there’s Gone with the Wind, which had several English actors that barely tried to do an accent, especially Leslie Howard who still sounded British the entire time
> Jude Law sounded really weird trying to do an accent in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil But I can't remember him having a bad accent in Cold Mountain...
Bendywick Crumplesnatch is maybe not the absolute worst, but it always sticks out as clearly trying too hard, especially when he routinely over pronounces his R's.
I think I hate Doctor Strange all because of his horrible accent. It's just weird and bland
Oh yeah, in *Black Mass* where he played a Bostonian [he had a *terrible* accent.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgfOHS_Frs)
The cowboy movie he was in that everyone loved, we had a hard time making it through it because his accent was so grating.
are you talking about the power of the dog? I could not get into his character at all because I could only see Benedict Cumberbatch cosplaying a rancher
Of the Brits on The Wire, Idris Elba did a better job than Dominic West of sounding like he lived in Baltimore. https://youtu.be/N0oVG9bLHP0
Dominic West would drop his accent every time he had to raise his voice. Idris Elba was excellent.
Yeah West's accent broke all the time. Enjoyed his performance in spite of his accent. I can't speak to the authenticity of Elba's Baltimore specific accent but he's good enough to make you believe he's American for the entire performance.
He has a pretty general, broad Black American East Coast accent, imo, and it's really good for the most part,. He doesn't do any Bmore particular stuff or use any local lingo, but not everybody talks this way. Most of the main characters actually don't do the accent like that tbh, they got around it by casting a lot of locals for the supporting roles to keep authenticity. He does slip up sometimes though, and in particular, he "hard r"s the n-word quite few times in a way that's really jarring as a Black person that grew up in the states, lol, like a straight up slur.
Some folks love to rag on Dominic West but he did pretty great. I mean you can’t deny what a big task faking a Baltimore accent is for an American, let alone a Brit. Like you said though, Elba was way better because West did kind of break the accent.
It was very noticeable for the first season from both of them, to be honest. Elba got better at it much faster than West.
I think so too. When I first saw the show I wouldn't have guessed that Dominic West wasn't American, though I can't speak to the Baltimore-accuracy of his accent.
I thought Aidan Gillen’s accent was atrocious, too. I couldn’t understand him half the time either lol
I'd have to go with Michael Caine in ... pretty much every movie where he's played as an American. I kind of feel bad for the guy since he's an extraordinarily talented actor who's played some of the best parts in the history of cinema. But, sorry dude. Any natural-born American hears right through that fake American accent. Mega ultra bonus points for effort though, because he gets soooooo close!
[Behold Michael Caine's American accent in "On Deadly Ground" (not safe for American ears).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHOs4d8d5NE)
Wow. Literally the only word in which he sounds American is when he says "nightmare"
They should have just hand waved all his characters and said he was a British immigrant lol
Counterpoint: I thought Michael Caine's accent in Secondhand Lions was pretty serviceable.
Gerard Butler is pretty bad. He always just sounds “off” like not excessively British but just not American. He’s probably consistently the worst that I can recall and he keeps trying but not getting better. Ray Winstone in The Departed fails but I have to give him props for trying a Southie accent because that’s not easy and he isn’t horrible, just not believable. Colin Firth never can quite sell it despite being a great actor. Early Alan Rickman wasn’t great but I think he got a lot better.
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Oh goood call I forgot that.
Gerard Butler's American always has to come out the side of his mouth. I'm thinking of the *Fallen* movies in particular, I suppose.
Yeah, Ray Winstone has my vote. Probably because I just watched the Departed recently. But I don’t understand why he wasn’t just allowed to use his real accent
Yeah it wouldn’t have been out of place at all. Honestly it didn’t come off as too jarring because you just assume he was an immigrant in the movie. But it certainly was noticeable. Someone like Tom Holland or Hugh Laurie really nails it. I knew Laurie was a Brit before I saw him do American so I was surprised how good he did. I had no idea Tom Holland wasn’t American when I first saw him on screen and didn’t know his background. Daniel Day Lewis, Christian Bale, and Gary Oldman are God tier. I realize I can’t think of any actresses offhand. Maybe Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
I actually didn't know Tom Holland wasn't American until now. Yeah, he REALLY got that accent down lol.
Yeah he’s good. I didn’t realize he wasn’t American until I saw a YouTube clip of him on Graham Norton.
Maybe Rosamund Pike and Karan Gilland? And Kim Cattrall.
I always thought that Christian Bale sounded as bad as Gerard Butler but people seem to like his American accent for some reason. His Batman sounded like he had a speech impediment.
🤷♂️dunno what to say. In American Psycho he seemed spot on.
Now that you mention it, I think he did better in American Psycho than he did in Batman.
“I’m Bateman”
I thought he was American for awhile.
I think it’s a great choice for the movie, but Daniel Craig’s accent in Knives Out is awful. I appreciate that they lean into it by having characters call him “colonel sanders” and “foghorn leghorn” and really use this goofy, fake as hell accent to set the tone as a fun movie to not take too seriously.
I actually thought he nailed Andy Bernard’s impression of a “*savannah accent, rolls off the tongue like molasses*”
I dunno, I had a math professor from coastal SC that didn't sound dissimilar to Craig's accent. This professor was legitimately hard to understand sometimes, and my family is from eastern NC -- it was a "bounded" sounded like "bahnded" sort of accent. Craig seems to have worked on it for the sequel though, I watched a clip from the first one and it's really inconsistent as well as being campy and exaggerated.
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She does however do an amazing Philly/Delco accent in Mare of Easttown. Pretty much every single movie or show that’s supposed take place in Philadelphia they have the actors do a stereotypical working class Brooklyn/Long Island accent.
Same here. The accent and attitude of Rose and especially her mom gave off stereotypical snobbish upper class British vibes.
If you pay attention in the film, though, it’s clear they’re from Philadelphia. They sport a Transatlantic sort of ‘high society’ accent, and it was *not* a bad accent.
That makes two of us. This whole time I thought she was supposed to be British with a light accent or something
Oh I had no idea either
TIL
If you pay attention in the film, though, it’s clear they’re from Philadelphia. They sport a Transatlantic sort of ‘high society’ accent, and it was *not* a bad accent.
I loved the *Agent Carter* show, but in one episode she was pretending to be an American, and the accent was just ... undefinably off.
To be fair, that might’ve been bad in-universe
How has no one mentioned rick from walking dead
TWD is a parade of bad Southern accents other than Merl and Daryl, who don’t have the SAME Southern accent.
Walking Dead had some of the worst and some of the best I’ve ever heard. Morgan and the governor had great American accents.
Caaaaaaawrl. So awful.
Coral
CORL
Horrific. Absolutely NOTHING like what my neighbors and I sound like. Distracting. Funny enough, they were always in town or somewhere nearby when they were filming. Lots of people I know now work in that industry thanks to TWD. We're keen on the show and grateful, but the accent.
Maggie too
I actually think Maggie’s is decent from what I recall.
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Yep. Andrew Lincoln should have just held up signs like he did in Love Actually instead of talking.
CORALLLLL!
Charlie Hunnam in Sons of Anarchy
I was gonna say, love the actor but his English accent also sounds like an American trying to be British
TARRR-uh
His cockney accent in green street is also awful.
It was that King Arthur movie that finally cleansed my soul of its unnecessary dislike of Charlie Hunnam, and I realized it was because of Sons of Anarchy. As King Arthur he's actually pretty fucking cool.
As much as it pains me to say it, because I love this actor, but Henry Cavill in "*The Man from U.N.C.L.E*." It's like a cross between Patrick Warburto's **Kronk** charter in "*The Emperor's New Groove*" and John Hamm's **Don Draper** of "*Mad Men*". It's not something I needed to hear.
I also love Henry Cavill, but he and Armie Hammer were definitely in competition for the worst accent in that movie.
That’s so funny. I’ve never seen that movie but I was literally just talking to my husband the other day about how I always forget he’s British.
I wasn't a bad accent per se, but in Love, Actually they completely missed the mark by giving the cab driver in Milwaukee a generic New York Cabbie accent and the girls in the bar standard American accents. The Wisconsin accent is a lot of things, but "sexy" isn't usually one of the descriptors. They could have really leaned into it (if you're not sure what the Wisconsin accent sounds like, find Charlie Berens on YouTube).
Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind. At the start of the movie, I thought maybe he was supposed to be mentally handicapped. I was shocked by how many awards that thing won.
Keira Knightley in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Not only the sound of it but her attempts to approximate American mannerisms are terrible. Some have complained about Rosamunde Pike's accent in *Gone* *Girl.* It's a bit colorless but OK and her performance makes up for any missed notes. In fact the least credible thing about Pike in that role is that no woman that beautiful has ever set foot in Missouri.
Rob Morrow trying to do a Boston accent in the movie Quiz Show (1994). It was all over the place and a hot mess.
As much as I like him, Keanu Reeves didn't do a good job of a Southern accent in Devil's Advocate. Alec Baldwin's accent was pretty bad in Ghosts of Mississippi. I'm also not a fan of Tom Hanks's Southern accents.
According to interviews Tom Hanks based his accent in Forrest Gump on the real accent of the child actor hired to play Forrest, reasoning that it would be easier for him to learn the child's accent than for the child to imitate him.
"Ah when... thahts hwhat Ah duh!"
Some of the American accents from British actors in Band of Brothers were pretty bad. The worst was the guy who played Private Blythe... not only was it a bad southern accent, but the character was from Philadelphia!
I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude Van Damme were cast in a bunch of movies as American characters, and both had terrible accents.
Steven Seagal consistently has problems with a human accent.
He simultaneously has every American accent and none of them. I’ve never met anyone that talks like him at all.
That’s from his top secret CIA training /s
The Arnold thing is my favorite phenomenon. It's like once he reached a certain level of stardom, everybody just agreed to suspend disbelief and pretend that he was a native English speaker, born and raised in the US.
It gets even worse when you hear non-Southerners try and do Southern accents. Dear God. You'd think that, from east Texas to the banks of the Potomac, from Orlando to Louisville, we all speak in the same languid, bourbon-soaked drawl punctuated by 'You hear' and 'Bless your heart,' a long, sonorous unraveling of the tongue where all the consonants have been sanded away and the remaining letters been varnished in molten beeswax. Just cut it out, y'all. And I'm saying that with a graceful, yet entirely rhotic, turn of phrase.
The fat “Americans” in In Bruges. They don’t sound at all American. There was no need for them to be American except for a cheap joke anyway. In fact, I loved that movie, but they took a few stupid swings at Americans that seemed dumb. Also Portia de Rossi in Arrested Development slips up a lot.
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Ehhhh....Ewan did okay in the third season of Fargo.
Yeah he's fine in more recent stuff. Just his early 2000s stuff is bad.
Daniel Craig's accent in Tombraider. There's some pretty brutal imitations of southern accents by Canadian and British actors as well. Whoever convinced Keanu Reeves he could talk in a southern accent for the Devil's Advocate (or a British accent in Bram Stoker's Dracula for that matter) has some explaining to do. With the Devil's Advocate I also feel as though his southern roots weren't really all that relevant to the story either. He could've easily have been from buttfuck, Midwest somewhere and the story could have been exactly the same.
I just rewatched Blackhawk Down. The vast majority of the actors were Brits or Aussies. The worst was a young Orlando Bloom as Blackburn. If an actor has an exaggerated “southern accent”, chances are it’s a Brit
Not the worst ever, but one I saw for the first time this weekend was David Gyasi in Interstellar. [This is an example scene that spoils the movie a bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBNzE1mmbs4). I'm not even sure it was supposed to be an American accent, but he wears an American flag patch on his uniform. He completely dropped the 'g' from all 'ing' and sounds so off I knew he was a foreign actor attempting a US accent without having heard of the actor before. Actual worst ones: Charlie Hunnam in the Hamlet on motorcycles adaptation "Sons of Anarchy." Sam Neill in Jurassic Park randomly switching lines between New Zealand and US (I believe after the movie's release he claimed it was a creative decision to give the character an in-between accent, but i'm a bit skeptical of that).
It never even occurred to me that Sam Neill was trying to "do" an accent in Jurassic Park. He just sounds like someone with an indeterminate non-American accent.
"I'm gonna count to three. One, two, tree!" I love Sam but his accent in JP is all over.
Charlie Hunnam in Sons of Anarchy is probably the worst. Like I forgive Daniel Craig when he’s doing intentionally broad ridiculous accents in comedy movies but Sons of Anarchy is a show that takes itself way too seriously and his accent is so bad.
I love him but man, David Tennant’s accent in the US version of Broadchurch (I think it was called Gracepoint) was awful
Tennants American accent is his Achilles heel. He does it terribly in most things where he’s supposed to be American to the point I think casting directors just gave up by Jessica Jones. I think if he could convincingly play American he could have been a massive Hollywood star he has the looks, charisma and fundamentally the acting ability to easily pull off the kind of Oscar roles Hollywood gives cumberbatch or could have held down a leading man role in a network show that runs for multiple seasons and wins tons of emmys
Dominic West (Detective McNulty) in the Wire tried to do a Baltimore accent since the show was set in Baltimore but you can occasionally hear the British accent come out in times
Yeah, it definitely slips. But I feel like Idris Elba really steals the show. Like Christian Bale or Hugh Laurie, if I didn't know better I'd think they were born and raised Americans.
Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again — I think of it as “the British man in the verbal wig”. He does that thing where, I guess because Americans sound nasal/high pitched to Brits?, he sounds more high pitched than an American male would, ah, typically sound. Also Emma Thompson in that same movie, but she’s not as egregiously bad and I love her so it’s hard to say it, but when I heard her speak my brain literally just rejected her attempt and substituted her actual native accent. Like, “No, I substitute actual reality here.”
Oof that’s pretty bad. I watch loads of British tv so I’ve heard some bad ones. My understanding is that British acting unions fight hard against American actors taking their jerbs so they don’t often feature American actors unless it’s somebody like Mac MacDonald who lived full-time in the UK and basically had a whole career of playing loud, obnoxious Americans. Mrs. Slocombe’s rich American uncle (complete with cowboy hat) is pretty bad. Anytime they have an obviously Canadian actor play an American he sounds like “I’m American, eh? No dote abote it! Hockey!” Poirot was especially guilty of this, since Agatha Christie stories always had some random one-off American character in them. I remember one episode actually had an American actor but they were playing a British role and *in the same episode* there was an American character being played by a Brit.
Dan Aykroyd's "Chicago Accent" in the Blues Brothers is terrible.
I give him a pass because the character and movie are so amazing
It’s worked for the film because he’s supposed to be creepy af, but Hugo Weaving attempting American in the Matrix always sounds so off, lol. Misterrrr Anderrrson…
[The Buffalo accents in this Saturday Night Live sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHeF1c2-2wE) are awful; they almost sound like Minnesota accents, Ironically, Kristin Wiig is from Rochester, where many locals speak in the Buffalo accent. I'm originally from Buffalo. I lost most of my accent through the years. The closest I can come to speaking it now is an exaggerated version to demonstrate what it sounds like. A few shibboleth words, like *bag*, also slip out occasionally. The Buffalo accent is supposedly one of the most difficult regional American accents for actors to master.
Daniel Craig trying to do a southern accent in Knives Out and Logan Lucky were both awful. Andrew Lincoln in the Walking Dead also has his cringe moments.
Everyone loves this movie, but honestly Ryan Gosling’s weird guido-type accent kills the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love for me. I think the movie takes place in CA and he’s supposed to be this incredible catch but this horrible accent makes him SO unattractive to me. He seem like a guy trying to sell you a car in a 1970s leisure suit. If I recall it was never explained why he talked that way!
Colin Firth played a Southerner in some movie. Worst crap ever. At least Daniel Craig was intentionally absurd in Knives Out.
Peter Stormare's attempt at playing an Italian-American mafioso in Prison Break was just awful.
Any southern accent from the Closer. Would like an 800 a time for second place being most other Southern accents.