Accents

TBH, I can only come up with a few examples because it's not something that happens too often. Obviously, there's Jane Leeves Daphne Moon in Frasier. Then there's Anthony Stewart Head in Buffy, who sounds a lot more like Spike than he does Giles. There's also Claire Forlani in CSI:NY, who seems to be doing a generic 'well spoken, but not aristocratic' British accent. I once heard Sean Maguire doing a hideous British accent in some American sit-com, but I don't know what it was called. There was also Charles Shaughnessy in The Nanny and Jaime Murray in Dexter.

I've not heard it, but apparently, Gina Bellman and Mark Sheppard both 'do' a British accent sometimes when pulling cons in Leverage.

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One of the worst accents in a film I think is Rod Steiger in Run of the Arrow. His New Yorker doing a Southern Irish accent is a mess.



Somebody who I thought got it right is Kelly Macdonald in No Country for Old Men. She didn't look familiar to me at the time so I found info on her. I was surprised to see she was the girl from Trainspotting.

I've been to West Texas but I'm not an authority on accents from that area. Tommy Lee Jones is a Texan an gives her praise. Good enough for me.

He had one

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Leonardo Dicaprio is terrible anytime he tries to do an accent.

Colin Ferrall's Irish accent always creeps through when he does an American accent.

Helen Mirren's Russian accent in 2010: The Year We Make Contact was pretty well done.

Caution - multiple swears!



No, not Big Neeson.

Bob Hoskins' SAS priest is bad enough but the thing which makes me almost cry about A Prayer For The Dying is not only Rourke's laughable attempt at (admittedly one of the hardest to pull off) a Norn Irish accent but the lengths he went to research it.

The Belfast brogue has floored many - Pitt in The Devil's own, Donald Sutherland in The Eagle Has Landed, Tommy Lee Jones in that bomb thing etc etc could well have been worse - but none were as po-faced in the attempt as old Mickey.

Kudos to the late great Pete Postlethwaite's attempt in In The Name of The Father. That was rather good.

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I thought his South African accent was spot on in Blood Diamond. Near perfect, imo.

Someone mentioned Thomas Jane in Stander, and he too does a great job with the south african accent.

Edward Norton's 'English' accent in The Poor Man's Prestige is hideous. Even Biel does a better job than him :/

Leonardo DiCaprio plays a Zimbabwean, not a South African, in Blood Diamond. There's a difference, including accents.

Thanks, I only know the first example. I see what you mean now.

I don't think it's the most hideous accent though.

I have heard Janes Leeves on talk shows and that is the way she talks. Her accent is the same as on Frazier. I can't tell how her accent is different from other English actors.

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Dick Van Dyke in MARY POPPINS used to be the first thing that came to me on this subject, but over the years, I've come to realize that his cockney accent wasn't that bad, it just wasn't consistent throughout the film...it would be there one scene and gone the next. I hated Don Cheadle's accent in the OCEAN'S ELEVEN movies too. As for the queen of accents, Meryl Streep, loved it in SOPHIE'S CHOICE, but found it extremely distracting in THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. I also found Leonardo DiCaprio's accent in BLOOD DIAMOND equally distracting. I thought Kate Winslet was believably American in TITANIC, though I was shocked to learn recently that the character of Rose was supposed to be only 17...NEVER bought that Rose was only 17. And even though I'm not sure what kind of accent it was supposed to be, I have to give a shout out to Gert Frobe in GOLDFINGER.

I agree, Costner did not have a bad English accent, he just didn't have one. But to be far his accent was not nearly as bad as the idea of how they moved around England...

One thing that does grate me is the accents in "How train your Dragon". The people on the island all speak with a Scottish accent, this is fair enough, it would make a certain amount of sense as this may be where the settlers are from. What gets me though is why all of the children in it speak with American accents? Where did these come from? Where is there a variation?

One bad one I have seen also is John Malkovich in rounders, one of the great lines from him is "mister sonov-abitch!", you can tell he is having fun in the role.

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Regarding Van Dyke in MARY POPPINS, I don't think it was so much that the accent was bad as it was inconsistent...it would be prominent in one scene and non-existent in the next.

Hated DiCaprio's accent in BLOOD DIAMOND, I found it very distracting...ditto Tom Hanks in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

She's actually from essex. In the show daphne was from manchester, however the producers wouldn't let her do a proper manchester accent as many people wouldn't have understood it.
She ended up doing a soft "northern" accent instead.

Accents vary wildly in england. I live in a town of about 12,000 people and within the town the accent changes distinctly.

I imagine its difficult enough for an actor to do a generic British/American/South African/Irish accent successfuly without going into regional dialects.


Here's my personal favourtite bad accent

Worst: Steven Segal in Driven to Kill. It's supposed to be a Russian accent but it sounds more like what I imagine Sylvester Stallone would sound if he had a tooth ache and a mouth full of peanut butter.

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I'm sure I've said this before but Robert Carlyle's scouse accent in 51st State is atrocious, so is Emily Mortimers, but when you come from a place you're much more sensitive to the nuances of accent

What's the difference between the accent Jane Leeves used on FRASIER than her real one?

Nearly 300 miles.

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I haven't seen The Prestige so I can't compare them but I like The Illusionist very much. I think it's an Austrian accent they're going for though.