To find bad accents so off-putting?

[FrostyChocolateMilkshake]

Watching a film on Netflix and I cannot get past the terrible American accent of the male character, played by a British actor. His English accent keeps slipping in and it distracts from the storyline.

I just find it so annoying and off-putting - surely they could have cast an American actor as the lead role!? It's one of my biggest bugbears.

Does anyone else find this irritating or has lockdown turned me into an accent-ravaging arsehole?

Arrrghhh

I was watching Tiny Pretty Things on Netflix and found the British character's accent so fake that I googled where she was really from.

She's from London.

Josh Harnett in Blow Dry. Jesus Christ.

Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart.His accent made me cringe.

Apparently many Americans, including the people who cast him on House, had no idea Hugh Laurie was a Brit.

Karl Urban’s Australian accent sounds fine on The Boys right up until the moment you work out he’s meant to be Cockney at which point I want to throw a brick at the TV - I don’t fancy him which means I find it harder to forgive (though he’s fabulous in Dredd).

My pet hate is actors doing accents which aren’t shit but sound really laboured. Ralph Fiennes is doing a thing set in Suffolk, and he banged on about how lots of people do a lazy West Country Mummerset accent for Norfolk/Suffolk, and it was really important for them to be more truthful and they worked with a dialect coach for months to get it spot on. But when I listened to the clip (before I heard the interview) all I could hear was “Rafe Fiennes Doing a Suffolk Accent! I’ve Worked Really Hard On This! Listen!”

Likewise I’m struggling to watch The Prestige, in which Christian Bale does Working Class English and hammers his class origins into every sodding syllable.

Oh and Tom Ellis doing American for Lucifer’s evil twin brother. Don’t believe it for a moment.

I'm surprised people like Renee Zellweger's accent in Bridget Jones. It sounds so put on to me. She doesn't waver from it, but she speaks so slowly and sometimes with an odd sort of slur that betrays her normal voice. And is her normal tone that breathy voice she uses when she's American or the lower one when she's English?!

I liked Daniel Craig's Foghorn Leghorn accent in Knives Out .

I really hated Karl Urban's accent in The Boys - I have read that he purposely did it like that as some sort of ironic commentary? Something to do with the original comic. Have no idea if that is true - but he managed an English accent in LOTR so why he would find it difficult now I don't know.

@FrostyChocolateMilkshakeI, haven't read the full thread but I bet it was Sacha Barren Cohen in Chicago 7 , bless him .

If anyone watched Nashville too I was so shocked Scarlett was Australian and Gunnar was English.

I have! Loved it, they really nailed the accents there. I actually went to a concert of the Nashville cast, it was really good.

@Frangipaniflower

I'm watching The Serpent on BBC at the moment and the leading lady is trying to speak french (Canadian)- it's hilarious, completely distracting. Still a good programme though. Peaky Blinders is really the worst though

I only have high school French but even I was thinking that sounds like French-French, not Quebecois-French. Still the clothes made up for it!

What I find really irritating is when English actors play English characters on American shows. They rarely speak with their own English accent but put on either a fake posh accent or a fake cockney accent. They might as well hire an American actor with a bad fake accent.

Daphne from Frasier has such a strange accent. I can’t quite place it. Sort of like an old Yorkshire lady. When her brothers show up, they’re a combination of Geordie and Londoners which is confusing.

Mel Gibson in Braveheart is just embarrassing.

Yes the Nashville actors were surprisingly good, seeing as they had to sing in the right accent too.

There's a few dodgy ones in Discovery of Witches. Quite a lot of the cast are Welsh because of the filming location but it sometimes sounds like they've been told not to be too Welsh as they seem to slip into weird dialects sometimes.

Simon Baker's American accent is good but there are some words that come out Australian now and again.

I’m with you on this. Once you are aware of how grim an accent is it becomes very hard to keep on watching/listening. Some of the worst offenders are on radio 4 dramas. I can’t work out why they don’t just audition for someone who is able to speak with the necessary accent. As soon as I hear someone’s ridiculous attempts at an American, Indian, African, Eastern European accent I have to switch off no matter how interesting the story is. Hugh Laurie in House. I would love to have watched that but his American accent was heinous. So many actors are dreadful. I get that they need big names to head big scale tv programmes and films but they’re generally terrible at convincing foreign accents of any sort.

It's true that no American Southerner, living or dead, ever spoke like Daniel Craig in Knives Out, but I thought that was part of the joke.

@Shosha1

I love audible books. But the amount of times I have had to send them back because of the awful accents. I have got to get point if it is a book where the narrator is American and likely to do a British accent ( Scots is the worst) then I dont order it Mind you its the same sometimes with a British narrator trying to do an American accent.

The worst one is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. It starts ok with an American actor doing the voice of an American but when he gets to Wales..... oh Lord. It’s like someone described a Welsh accent to him but they had never heard one and he wasn’t really listening.

I detest the accent that famous Scottish actors develop once they have any success in the states. Not when they are acting but when they are being interviewed etc. I find myself ranting "yer fae Paisley ya dafty"

@SenecaFallsRedux

It's true that no American Southerner, living or dead, ever spoke like Daniel Craig in Knives Out, but I thought that was part of the joke.

Oh my god! Daniel Craig in Knives Out! That was insane! It really was a real clown moment. Not American but even I said 'What was that?', then searched to find people talking about it.

I got that it may have been deliberate when Chris Evan's character made fun of it after he was caught and he was ranting at all of them. That part made me laugh.

@ToastandJamandTea

I detest the accent that famous Scottish actors develop once they have any success in the states. Not when they are acting but when they are being interviewed etc. I find myself ranting "yer fae Paisley ya dafty"

Clydebank yank my mum used to call it! Lulu was particularly bad for it

@kerosene20

I saw the guy who plays Sandy in Shetland in The Bay and he was doing an English accent which is very good. I always assumed he was Scottish as his accent is very thick and unlike any Scottish accent I’ve ever heard. Had to google and he is actually Scottish. If anyone watched Nashville too I was so shocked Scarlett was Australian and Gunnar was English.

As I understand it Sandy is the only Shetlander in Shetland (the show) using his natural accent. Shetland isn’t really Scots, it’s a very distinct dialect with strong Norse influences. The whole show is the perfect example of the “generic Scots accent” a PP poster referred to. I love the Shetland dialect and was so disappointed it was used so little. Perez is meant to be from Fair Isle!

@teuer, that’s interesting that you don’t find Hugh Laurie’s accent in House credible - I’ve read a lot of comments from US viewers that they had no idea he was English.

Samantha Morton in the walking dead. Wtf was that about???
Also another one for Karl Urban. The character doesn't need to be from London so it all seems a bit strange.

@user1495884620

What I find really irritating is when English actors play English characters on American shows. They rarely speak with their own English accent but put on either a fake posh accent or a fake cockney accent. They might as well hire an American actor with a bad fake accent.

Absolutely.

The aforementioned Tom Ellis in Lucifer as a case in point!

It has prevented me from watching!

It really does show how little power actors have on a set, because at least 50% of the cast were British and must have been thinking WTF???

Not accents but I remember reading about how there was a scene in the live action version on 101 Dalmatians with racoons. It was pointed out by the cast that we don’t have racoons in the U.K. The reply was ‘it says in the script you do’.

Has anyone mentioned Stephen Graham in White House Farm?

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

Im English but I lived in Scotland for 16 years and thought I knew Scottish accents well. Until I watched both Brave and the Last King of Scotland and thought what terrible inauthentic accents the leads had - only to find they are actually both very much Scottish

My one piece of Brave trivia - the Young McGuffin, who no-one can understand, is voiced by Kevin McKidd doing the Elgin accent he grew up speaking with his family. Full credit for Pixar for going with that!

I didn't mind Karl Urban's accent in The Boys. Simon Pegg's American one is worse, in my view.

On audiobooks... I love her dearly but Penelope Keith cannot do accents. At all. With the Agatha Raisin books, you can almost hear the producer flinching nervously whenever a Scottish character is introduced. Keith blunders on gamely, but whatever that sound is that comes out isn't Scottish. Or English. Or anything really. It's just an alarming series of noises.