How important is an accent?

Accents can, for me, put me right out of the movies world when an accent is awful, or it can draw you in when its done good.

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@fake_shemp

You're allowed to do a normal accent if what you are saying is effectively in translation. It is really stupid- they did it in Little Ashes- to say translated Spanish in a Spanish accent, unless the character is Spanish but speaking English.

Even if an actor does a good accent, if they have a distinctive voice, it's hard to take them credibly.

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You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)

A couple of examples that come to mind. There's Michael Fassbender in X-Men: First Class, where occasionally his own accent surfaces and it is very distracting. I think he should have had at least a hint of a German accent really, but maintaining one accent was a must. And that's a shame because he was so good otherwise.

Another is Noomi Rapace in Prometheus. I don't remember anything in the film about where Shaw was supposed to come from (her dad worked in Africa at least for a bit) but her name isn't Scandinavian and I don't really see why the character would have been. So by that logic her accent is very odd and I wanted an explanation for it.