Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 32 Actors' Accents | WIRED

Great vid. Nice find.

For me Kevin Costner's "British" Accent was the worst fail on the list. Abysmal. Even worse that Smith's Nigerian attempt.

 

Costner doesn't count, because he didn't even ATTEMPT to use an accent. Dude went full "Fuck it, I'm Kevin Costner!" and just spoke in his normal voice.

The worst actual ATTEMPT at a British accent is far and away Kenu Reeves in Dracula.

 

What about Winona Ryder in the same film?

Still a fun movie though. ::

 

Is that Dennis from "Always Sunny In Philadelphia"?

I would love to see that episode. ::

 

I would have to watch it again. Keanus's accent was so bad I don't even recall Portman's.

 

I've noticed that brits tend to do North American accents way better than the reverse. (as long as they don't overdo it)

I'm pretty confident a random dude putting on (what sounds to us) a reasonably good accent would be figured out quite quickly where a brit over here could use local(ish) accent and most people wouldn't bat an eye.

Keep in mind I'm talking about real life situations, not a film where people are listening more intently.

 

Ryder

 

I was assuming he meant that Natalie Portman is Winona Ryder 2.0, but I'm sure not positive.

 

Nope, just a fuckup. alm:

 

Smith in Concussion is right up there with Kenu in Dracula as the worst accents ever. It's VERY APPARENT that Smith was only casted because the studio wanted an A-list star. If they wanted an actual QUALITY actor who coulda pulled off a good Nigerian accent, they woulda casted Don Cheadle.

 

Tom Cruise in that movie where he played an Irishman was fucking atrocious

 

Great vid!

 

What about Denzel Washington's British accent in For Queen and Country?

 

How was it?

 

It was pretty bad, wasn't the worst though and certainly wasn't as bad as Don Cheadle's

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The film itself was actually pretty good though

 

I didn't even know it existed until this week, I was expecting it to be crap but it was ok, nothing special but decent enough.

 

Finally saw the video, really interesting.

First off, Pitt's accent in Snatch was Irish gypsy, not Belfast, and personally I thought he nailed it. He was legit horrible when he actually attempted the Northern Irish accent though.

I thought Zelwegger, Paltrow and Jolie all did excellent jobs at that generic, middle-class southern English accent, couldn't really fault them to be honest. I'm struggling to think of an American actor off the top of my head who has really nailed a more specific regional British accent though, say cockney or Scouse. There must be somebody though.

I thought DiCaprio's accent in Blood Diamond was horrible, not enough to ruin the movie but it wasn't good.

 

There's hardly ever been a good scottish one, the list of failed attempts is long. even kevin spacey tried recently and just sounded 100% irish.

Ironically, probably the most convincing attempt wasn't even meant to be scottish - the dwarf from LOTR sounds pretty dead on as an old fashioned edinburgh gentleman. A windy, pisshead QC who's acting chairman of the local rugby club, giving long after dinner speeches, shouting at conversation partners three feet away from him, dominating the room. That voice exists.

youd have thought liam neeson would do better, he's from Antrim for goodness sake

 

I flicked through the thing a couple of times on yt and he seems to hardly string 5 words together to properly judge it...just a sentence at a time mumbled into his chest

 

There were a few times he got it bang on to be fair, like when he said "sweet" etc, but some of it was atrocious. There have been worse attempts though.

 

I was going to say, most attempts at Scottish accents seem to end up in the upper-class Edinburgh realm.

 

its interesting that you do get old time upper class Scots who still sound pure scottish like that. They say 'dinny' and 'laddie' and drop in weird old scots words like 'awaw'. I think that's kinda dying out and posh scottish people just sound more generically posh now, like kirsty wark.

Incidentally, I agree with the guy in the video that mel gibson actually had his moments where he got a generic falkirk/Stirling scottish accent bang on, but it kept slipping in and out.

 

I didn't even realize that Scottish accents varied depending on region! All sounds the bloody same to me.

What about the other actors in Braveheart; Hammish, his father and some of them other cats? Were they good renditions of the accent?

 

sit doon mate!

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cant really remember it's about 15 years since I saw it. As I remember most the other actors were just scottish. Apart from the mental irish guy

 

How was de niro's southern accent in Cape fear? Believable?