FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sarah on September 03, 2008, 08:34:45 AM
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Can any American or, indeed, British actors acquit themselves as well in a foreign language as the two actors named above do in American English? For that matter, in your opinion, what actors of any nationality are completely credible in a language other than their mother tongue?
A related question: U.S. television is rife with British actors playing Americans. Which impress you the most with the plausibility of their accents? For example, Jack Davenport, on Swingtown, is doing a terrible job, whereas Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers, Life) seems pretty spot on to me. Can any American actors play British well? Yeah, yeah, I know--Meryl Streep and Gwyneth Paltrow (and I don't think the latter does such a great job). But who else? And who are the worst?
This subject interests me. I don't know why.
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Those guys on The Wire did pretty decent American.
And no, I don't mention it solely because it is The Greatest Television Show Ever.
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All I can think of is Ewen McGregor in Blackhawk Down. Sometimes not too shabby, but at others he swings into full on John Wayne.
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Costner's Brit accent was strong in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I will also second Alexander Skarsgård's amazing work in Generation Kill.
As for another recent performance, I thought British actress Rebecca Hall was great in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (in terms of an American accent and in general).
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Yes, though there are fewer inept American accents from Brits than not (and I remember the olden days when the only American accent most English types could muster was exaggeratedly southern), Ewan McGregor makes the classic mistake of overhardening his r's (Jack Davenport does the same). Idris Elba and Dominic West did way better.
I know that one of the main reasons so many British actors have learned to put on reasonable American accents is the number of jobs/amount of money available over here. Americans working in the UK are much fewer.
No examples of actors for whom English is not the native tongue donning impeccable American (or even British) accents? I'm blanking.
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Hugh Laurie does pretty well in House, doesn't he? I guess I have a different ear for it.
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As for another recent performance, I thought British actress Rebecca Hall was great in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (in terms of an American accent and in general).
I didn't even know she was British. She was very good.
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We're overlooking Passion of the Christ. James Caviezel nailed Armaic.
On a serious note, I'm drawing a blank, too. I know there a few European actresses who can move around languages easily - Monica Belluci comes to mind - but I can't think of any Americans doing well in another language. Good question.
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John Malkovich has acted in a couple of French films. I haven't seen 'em though.
I re-watched Existenz recently, and noticed that Jude Law was actually doing a pretty convincing Canadian accent - it was distinctly southern Ontarian.
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Hugh Laurie does a good job, but I've read that he has problems with it. The later the shoot goes, the worse his accent gets. This is what makes his character so mumbly. But he's a champ for pulling it off.
Jamie "Apollo" Bamber from Battlestar Gallactica is English. I never would have thought so by his performance, until I saw a feature on the DVD where he confesses he had two days to learn how to speak 'Merican.
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LA Confidential was my first exposure to Guy Pearce, so I was very surprised to later learn that he's Australian. Russell Crowe's real accent kinda showed through the same way Dominic West's did on The Wire, but I thought Pearce's accent was excellent.
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The new guy on Law and Order is OK, but he has the same "r" problem.
"And when did you get the gun out of the drawererr?"
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
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Jodie Foster did her own French in the dubbed version of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane that I saw in gay Paree in 1977. Her accent was definitely American, but she did very well (she went to a bilingual high school). But she was reading, no doubt, so it hardly counts.
Who is the new guy on Law and Order?
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
Totally. She's almost unbearable in American movies, but she's breathtaking in Pedro Almodavar's films.
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
Totally. She's almost unbearable in American movies, but she's breathtaking in Pedro Almodavar's films.
There's an interesting English/Spanish dynamic in Cruz's performance/character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
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Jodie Foster did her own French in the dubbed version of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane that I saw in gay Paree in 1977. Her accent was definitely American, but she did very well (she went to a bilingual high school). But she was reading, no doubt, so it hardly counts.
Foster did some French in A Very Long Engagement, too, and I don't remember hating her short scene in there.
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
Totally. She's almost unbearable in American movies, but she's breathtaking in Pedro Almodavar's films.
There's an interesting English/Spanish dynamic in Cruz's performance/character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
I hear she's very good in that but I just can't bring myself to see a Woody movie in the theater anymore.
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Go see it, it's perfectly fine. Woody hasn't been this sarcastic in years (IMO, some people disagree).
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
Totally. She's almost unbearable in American movies, but she's breathtaking in Pedro Almodavar's films.
There's an interesting English/Spanish dynamic in Cruz's performance/character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
I hear she's very good in that but I just can't bring myself to see a Woody movie in the theater anymore.
You'll see it by week's end. Such is my decree.
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Penelope Cruz in English is probably the worst for me (I'm thinking specifically of Vanilla Sky, although she had some awful lines that weren't her fault). She's actually a very good actress when she only has to speak Spanish.
Totally. She's almost unbearable in American movies, but she's breathtaking in Pedro Almodavar's films.
There's an interesting English/Spanish dynamic in Cruz's performance/character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
I hear she's very good in that but I just can't bring myself to see a Woody movie in the theater anymore.
You'll see it by week's end. Such is my decree.
Maybe, but I want to see Man on Wire first.
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Alexander Skarsgård and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau -- those were the guys in Dude, Where's My Car?, right?
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Max Von Sydow always nails it, whatever country he's supposed to be from. I just watched The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (which prominently features a Dirtbombs song!) and was really impressed and moved by his portrayal of a sad crotchety of Frenchman.
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But his American is not unaccented.
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That is true. But he does have a way of making it sound like some kind of rich person, boarding school voice.
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Natascha McElhone (from the UK) portrays David Duchovny's ex-wife in Californication. She mostly does a decent job with 'merican, but it kind of falls apart in scenes where her character gets angry or raises her voice.
If you check out Gillian Anderson's bio, her family moved from London to Michigan when she was a kid, and she adopted a midwest accent to blend in. She's switched accents ever since, depending on what part of the globe she's in. Essentially acting in her daily life.
The weird thing is that her entire persona seems to change according to the accent. Check out these two clips ... the first one is her being posh and serious with a British interviewer, the second one is her acting frisky with Letterman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p45QBXRIgws http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Z8UvXjgG8
Other glamorous impostors : Charlize Theron (South Africa), Famke Janssen (Netherlands).
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How come Madonna isn't getting any love?
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I think Natascha McElhone's accent is terrible. It's the female equivalent of Jack Davenport's.
Yvonne Strahovski is another one who does a pretty good job, though.
Gillian Anderson's accent in that first clip is a weird meld of Brit and Am.
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How come Madonna isn't getting any love?
Because she's got all the money. Can't have both, Madge.
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How come Madonna isn't getting any love?
Because she's got all the money. Can't have both, Madge.
At least Swept Away pretty much sunk her acting career. Guy Ritchie's greatest contribution to film.
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Brits usually do it up pretty good, except when they're on fox. Greg House and Sarah Connor both talk like Gladys Ormphby.
[youtube]Xj-cfXahoLU[/youtube]
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As an Australian who almost never performs in her native accent, Nicole Kidman does a damn good job with this, most of the time. (We'll get to hear her natural voice this fall in Baz Luhrmann's Australia)
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I always felt that Dominic West occasionally wavers in The Wire, though not enough to care. Idris Elba however is incredibly convincing, especially if you hear his day to day voice, which is about as London as it gets.
The guy who plays Marty Crane (John Mahoney) in Frasier; I didn't know he was British until this year! He's from about 20 miles from where my parents live. Conversely, Daphne's 'Manchester' accent sounds nothing like anyone from round here except the students from down south.
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I had no idea he's English, either. But my in-depth research (IMDb) suggests he always speaks American, rather than reverting to his regular accent when he's not playing a role. This makes his achievement less remarkable to me.
That new True Blood series (speaking of Alexander Skarsgård) appears to be full of Australians and Brits.
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Wow, I had no idea John Mahoney was British either. That makes his performance as the Southerner/Faulkner stand-in in Barton Fink even more impressive to me.
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But, again, it seems he lost his accent when he was a kid in the army; it's not as though he normally speaks with a British accent.
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I have been told by Wife that I am to mention Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary. Apparently she was so good that she got a job in London and passed for a few months before the people in her office realized that the "new girl who looks like Renee Zellweger" really WAS Zellweger.
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I have been told by Wife that I am to mention Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary. Apparently she was so good that she got a job in London and passed for a few months before the people in her office realized that the "new girl who looks like Renee Zellweger" really WAS Zellweger.
Am I dumb or does this story make no sense? Why was Renee Zellweger working an office job in London?
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I have been told by Wife that I am to mention Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary. Apparently she was so good that she got a job in London and passed for a few months before the people in her office realized that the "new girl who looks like Renee Zellweger" really WAS Zellweger.
Am I dumb or does this story make no sense? Why was Renee Zellweger working an office job in London?
It was undercover method actorish stuff ...
During casting Zellweger was told she was too skinny to play the chubby Bridget, so she very quickly embarked on gaining the required weight. She gained 20 pounds in order to complete her transformation to Bridget Jones.[10] Her dramatic weight fluctuations became the subject of much media interest. Her performance as Bridget received praise from critics, with Stephen Holden of The New York Times commenting, "Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real."[10] Along with receiving voice coaching to fine-tune her English accent, part of Zellweger's preparations involved spending three weeks working undercover in a "work experience placement" for British publishing firm Picador in Victoria, London.[11][5] As a result of her considerable efforts to effect author Helen Fielding's character, Zellweger caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination.[5]
I don't care how brilliant she may be, I still can't stand Squinty Zellweger.
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The woman who plays Viv in Without A Trace is a highly respected British actor of some gritty, well-made films, but her US accent in this show absolutely stinks. It's not like a) she's a star or b) it's a show that demands a high level of acting talent, so you'd think they'd cast a local.
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I don't care how brilliant she may be, I still can't stand Squinty Zellweger.
Agreed - but she did provide for one of my favorite moments on the Chappelle Show.