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Tons of Brits do very convincing American accents...

Posted by Harmonia on November 17, 2009 at 17:29:40:
...I mean, their ranks are legion. A shorter list would be Brit actors who *can't* do a good American or foreign accents.

Hugh Laurie, Rufus Sewell, Ioan Gruffudd, Dominic West, Damian Lewis, Shane Taylor and Kevin McKidd are just the latest in a long line of Brit actors doing convincing American accents on US TV productions...and I can also think of actors like Brian Cox, Toby Jones, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and a score of others who've been seen in US movies and on American TV who some viewers may not even realize are British.

Being able to do regional British dialects, not to mention American and foreign accents, seems to be taken as part and parcel of an actor's skills in Old Blighty (and Ireland too). It seems to be something an actor just normally learns to do as part of their craft. Being more versatile with various dialects just puts more arrows in the actor's artistic quiver so to speak - not to mention opening up a wider variety of casting opportunities. Most brush up with dialect coaches for special roles, of course.

I'm not necessarily a great judge of Brit actors doing German, French or other accents, although Brits seem to have a natural affinity for Germanic accents. David Suchet's accent as Poirot convinced me, but I'm not sure what a native Belgian/English speaker would think. I've also noticed that many Dutch actors like Rutger Hauer can do very natural sounding American accents. Danish actress Connie Nielson can do American English and RP English - I think she could probably convince me of anything anyway.

Welsh, Irish and Scottish actors are performing in non-native dialect every time they essay a role as an "English" character be it received pronunciation or Liverpudlian. Y'all have a great variety of dialects in your fairly small country BTW.

American actors are a bit less succcessful at British and foreign accents IMO, with notable exceptions like Meryl Streep. Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. Some fo the hardest accents are American southern dialects (of which there are many) - Paltrow does a spot on West Texan accent which is very hard to capture. I think many people thought Alexis Denisof (of Angel and Dollhouse TV series) grew up in Britain instead of New Hampshire (he did live in London for several years).

And then there's Anthony LaPaglia, an Aussie who most Americans think is a native New Yorker. Aussies on the whole do very well at Americvan accents - Cate Blanchette, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, et al. Cate's British accent always seemed very good for me, and her father is from Texas, but you'd have to tell me how these folks' English accents are. Cate sounded great as Queen Elizabeth to me, and the vaguely RP of Weavings Elrons in the LOTR's movies was spot on to me. But while I was fine with Russelll Crowe's accent in Master & Commander, some other Brits I know were less impressed. You tell me.