Mom, why do you speak funny?

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

For some reason that remains unexplained, in The Birds, Northern Californian Rod Taylor sounds Australian and his mum Jessica Tandy sounds English, even though his sister sounds perfectly American. In the small hamlet there's also an old English lady who knows a lot about birds.

I suppose they didn't think too much about these trifles back then. Even in Jean-Claude Van Damme films they bothered making up a biographical excuse for his accent, for Christ's sake.

[elguapo4]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Gabriel Byrne has made a forty year career in cinema without ever changing his accent, it doesn't matter if he's a Boston gangster or Satan, Uther Pendragon or a viking chieftain , he's from the northside of Dublin in all of them

[Lang Spoon]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Gaybo often seems to do that terrible mid Atlantic thing, that sounds like no American, ever (see also Aidan Gillen as Carcetti of the shifting accent in the Wire - though he was also unable to carry off a Dublin w/c gangster accent in Love/Hate so maybe he's just unable to do any accent outside his own bar the ham sinister stage Englishman in Game of Thrones). Byrne takes me right out of Miller's Crossing more than once.

Caine and Connery are surely prime offenders here. When they do try an accent (Untouchables, Cider House Rules) you really wish they hadn't bothered.

[Gerontophile]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Everything I have seen Aiden Gillen in, he has the same fake-sounding Irish accent, but it doesn't matter anyway as the fucker can't act.

[Sam]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

I think the funniest bad accent I've heard in a film - and certainly the widest disparity between the quality of accent and standing of the actor - is Orson Welles being Irish in The Lady from Shanghai.

[Sean of the Shed]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Forest Whitaker's accent in The Crying Game made Dick van Dyke sound like a born and bred Cockney. He really had no idea which part of Britain he was supposed to be from.

[3 Colours Red]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is surely the nadir of not bothering.

I prefer an actor using their natural accent if they're not up to putting on a passable attempt at a more fitting one but this was just too incongruous, even with all the other Americans who couldn't be arsed either*.

* It shouldn't have stood out in that case but it just did and I can't explain why.

On the other hand, you end up with Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula - an accent that changed with every syllable and was always this close to slipping back into his usual monotone East Coast beach bum (despite being born in Beirut and raised in Canada).

[Bored Of Education]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Slightly different but I did wonder why Elizabeth Debicki bothered with an OK-ish American accent in The Night Manager. Her character may have been American in the book but her natural Australian accent would have worked just as well.

[Haddock]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

In Game of Thrones, the actors playing the older Stark and associated characters are often Northerners and speak with something like their natural accents. The younger Starks' flat vowels, though, are very much a put-on job by private and public-school alumni.
The "you knor nuthing, John Snore" Wildling actress might sound like she comes from Seacroft, but she's a Scottish Laird's daughter

[Snake Plissken]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

3CR - Costner tried an English accent for a couple of days on Prince of Thieves but realised he couldn't do it properly so just reverted to his normal accent.

[WOM]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

For some reason, a shit-ton of Aussie actors are turning up in stuff we watch lately. Every so often, their 'yeah' becomes a drawn-out Aussie 'yeeeeahhh' and 'right' becomes 'raaaaht'.

[3 Colours Red]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Snake Plissken wrote: 3CR - Costner tried an English accent for a couple of days on Prince of Thieves but realised he couldn't do it properly so just reverted to his normal accent.

As I alluded to, he definitely made the right choice in that case but it still jars, it still stands out. It's bizarre.

[Incandenza]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

WOM wrote: For some reason, a shit-ton of Aussie actors are turning up in stuff we watch lately. Every so often, their 'yeah' becomes a drawn-out Aussie 'yeeeeahhh' and 'right' becomes 'raaaaht'.

Nicole Kidman had a few Australian-sounding moments in Big Little Lies.

A watched a video from a dialect coach giving grades to different performances recently. It was entertaining, if a bit long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDvESEXcgE

[Various Artist]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

3 Colours Red wrote:

3CR - Costner tried an English accent for a couple of days on Prince of Thieves but realised he couldn't do it properly so just reverted to his normal accent.

As I alluded to, he definitely made the right choice in that case but it still jars, it still stands out. It's bizarre.

This is a great point. Christian Slater and Mike McShane use American accents throughout the film as well, yet somehow no-one's ever been bothered by that, have they? The only other one that gets much comment is Sean Connery's Richard the Lionheart (who in reality would probably have been speaking French, apart from anything else), who of course sounds – inevitably – purely like Sean Connery. Yet Costner's has made him virtually a poster boy for jarringly wrong accents in film, ever since the movie came out.

I suppose it's because he's playing such a central role of such a quintessentially English folkloric figure. As soon as you see him crawl out of the Dover surf, bury his face in the sand of his 'home' country and announce to Azim that tonight they dine with his father in "Naahding-ham", any sharks just out of sight in the waves can consider themselves well and truly jumped. Somehow the accent only makes the preposterous notion of the pair of them force-marching 140 miles or whatever it is by nightfall all the more ridiculous, like he's some tourist who has no idea whatsoever of the scales involved. The fact that they then appear to detour via Hadrian's Wall to reach the Midlands only ups the absurdity further.

[Sam]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

If you're going to mention that Richard would have been speaking French, it's only fair to mention that Robin and the others wouldn't have been speaking anything that sounds vaguely like modern English, too. All the same, it's been a couple of decades since I watched that film, and you're making me want to watch it again soon.

[Various Artist]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

I know Sam, that did occur to me even as I typed that bit in brackets. But I decided, "Nah, leave the really anal thought for someone else to fill in"...

I should note, of course, that I loved and still love Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Do watch it again, you know you want to – you'll thoroughly enjoy it in spite or because of its absurdities.

[3 Colours Red]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Morgan Freeman doesn't sound much like I'd imagine a Moor to sound either... but then, if you'd been blessed with a voice like Morgan Freeman's, you wouldn't want to change it either!

[Benjm]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

The Russell Crowe Robin Hood where he really tried with his accent and they went full on for the dour = realistic approach was no less a load of old cobblers than Prince Of Thieves. If you don't worry too much about the absurdity, it is quite hard to make an non-entertaining Robin Hood film. Like The Count Of Monte Cristo, the basic story is strong enough to carry itself through most calamities.

[Snake Plissken]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

I like Prince of Thieves. The US cut has the hand chopping and Christian Slater giving a distinctly modern "Fuck me, they cleared it!" in the catapult scene.

[Benjm]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Vulgarian Visigoth wrote: Even in Jean-Claude Van Damme films they bothered making up a biographical excuse for his accent, for Christ's sake.

Slight tangent, but I rather warmed to JCVD while reading an 'At Home With...' piece in Hello or similar at the GPs some years ago. One of the photos was of his young son's bedroom and its major decorative feature was an enormous Tintin mural. Proper roots man, Jean-Claude.

[Thierry Ennui]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Lang Spoon wrote: Caine and Connery are surely prime offenders here. When they do try an accent (Untouchables, Cider House Rules) you really wish they hadn't bothered.

When I saw The Untouchables, I very much got the impression Connery hadn't bothered to begin with.

[WOM]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

When my daughter was 8 or 9, we were watching the third Indiana Jones movie. About half way through, she points to Connery and says "Whysh he talking like thish?"

[tracteurgarcon]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Gerontophile wrote: Everything I have seen Aiden Gillen in, he has the same fake-sounding Irish accent, but it doesn't matter anyway as the fucker can't act.

I love Aiden Gillen but I've never seen him in anything where his accent stays the same from second to second let alone minute to minute.

[Lang Spoon]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Benjm wrote: The Russell Crowe Robin Hood where he really tried with his accent and they went full on for the dour = realistic approach was no less a load of old cobblers than Prince Of Thieves. If you don't worry too much about the absurdity, it is quite hard to make an non-entertaining Robin Hood film. Like The Count Of Monte Cristo, the basic story is strong enough to carry itself through most calamities.

You've got deaf ears mate.

[Lang Spoon]

Mom, why do you speak funny?

Thierry Ennui wrote:

Caine and Connery are surely prime offenders here. When they do try an accent (Untouchables, Cider House Rules) you really wish they hadn't bothered.

When I saw The Untouchables, I very much got the impression Connery hadn't bothered to begin with.

It's been a long time, but I'm sure he's attempting some Irish American "brogue" thing. But mostly yeah, he's just doing his Embra thing with some cheesy Oirish exclamations. Mind you, he did try a proper Son of Erin accent in some Disney slop (Darby and the Little People?) before he was Jimmy Bond. It was fucking atrocious.