Are you trying to give me a hint that I should drop it? I can lose the accent; I just have to really focus on what I’m saying. And I have to talk slowly.
In ‘Blindspotting’ I play a girl from Oakland, I’ve got an accent, I’ve got long, ’90s ‘Poetic Justice’ braids, and in ‘Monsters and Men’ I play a girl from Brooklyn.
At various points, I’ve had a massive chip on me shoulder. I had fights about me accent with loads of those fellers you get from third-class public schools. They used to think I was speaking German.
I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it’s ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself.
I never really had a strong accent.
My accent depends on whom I’m around.
If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won’t hear an English accent. You’ll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
I guess you should approach the roles differently when they’re actual people who have been, this is the difference. Getting the accent exact, or the hair exact is less important in a situation like this.
I’m from New York. I have a non, neutral accent. It can go any way you want.
An accent always helps me ground a character. It also helps to remind me what age I’m playing.
Someday, I’ll make a movie with a British accent.
I told my mom I was gay when I was 16, and my mom said with her heavy Brazilian accent, ‘OK, but at least look good at it.’
I can’t do an accent unless I’m on the set. I forget how to do it until I’m on the set.
To me, anyone with an Australian accent wielding a tennis racket is cool.
When I’m playing an American, I don’t play Lennie with an American accent. They’re American characters who look like me, but they have different voices.
My neutral accent is Bolton.
I’ve pretty much played every regional accent you can play in the U.K. I’ve played German, French, Arabic; I’ve been Jordanian, Lebanese. I’ve covered a lot of ground.
I didn’t act in Israel, but I wrote plays at home and acted in plays at school. I tried to get an agent when I was 12, but they told me that I had too much of an accent.
I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge, I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my Cockney accent.
I’ve played American characters so many times now, it’s so natural to me. But when I play American, I stay in the American accent from the minute I get the job till the minute I wrap.
It’s true that Paris is made up of equal parts of social conservatism and anarchic experimentation, but foreigners never quite know where to place the moral accent mark.
I’m from the South, where if you walk down the street and there’s somebody behind you talking with a Southern accent, you can’t tell whether it’s a black or a white person.
I’m different. I don’t speak perfect American. I do have a lilt of an Indian accent. I thought, ‘Maybe the world’s not okay with what I bring, being Indian.’
We did a black ‘Julius Caesar’ in which the predominant accent was Caribbean. This offends many people, you know. I also had a Chinese Marc Anthony. I also managed – this caused a great shock – I also got some white guys in it as well!
When I went to school, I didn’t know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn’t speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.
I think why my content does so well with so many different types of people is because it speaks to everyone. I’ll make a Soca music reference, I’ll use a Tamil word, I’ll do a Jamaican Patois accent. I know about all these people, and I’m not afraid to indulge in their culture.
I feel British but my dad still has a filthy Scottish accent so I’m hearing that a lot… but the Davis Cup did help my exposure and my experience, so it was great for me.
Shakespeare’s language does not require a British accent. It requires a facility with language, and that’s all.
I think the accent is what a lot of people find attractive. If you take the accent away, I’m a very troll-like individual.
What you find with singers, no matter where they’re from, if they have any kind of an accent, the accent tends to disappear when they sing.
I’ll never forget when we played Shepherd’s Bush in London. We played ‘I Run To You’, and we put the mic out for the last chorus, and you could hear them singing the chorus with the beautiful accent that they have.
I’m not good enough to flip in and out of my Brit accent to my American accent.
My voice was awkward. I had a deep Texan accent.
I live in L.A. so I worry my kids aren’t that connected to Britain, I suppose I don’t want them to become American kids. We try to get back three or four times a year. When they go to school they speak with a British-American accent but when they come home to us they go back to their British accent.
I grew up in Mexico, not the U.S., and the fact is that there just aren’t any parts for Latin actresses. I have to persuade people that my accent won’t be a problem, but an asset.
I want to show another side of Middle Easterners. My hope is that I would be able to play a variety of parts, and not always be the guy with the accent.
Germans don’t speak in a German accent, they just speak German.
The best story about Berta is my audition. I think they wanted her to be the ethnic character. They asked me to come with an Eastern European accent.
I just didn’t have time to deliver a Buffalo accent in a day, so I didn’t even try it.
Funny enough, every role that I have had, I try to tone down my accent or speak with better diction.
I was always curious about the anxiety a person would feel when you open your mouth and you have an accent. You could have a Ph.D. or be a lawyer, but as soon as you say something, you may be diminished in the eyes of someone else.
Working on the accent helped, enormously. I will tell you that when I brought Michael a correct ‘British’ accent, one that my dialect coach was happy with, he hated it.
I love rapping. I do. My styling’s similar to Missy Elliott – I think she’s so dope. In a weird way, that’s how I first learned the American accent: doing American rap songs.
Coming in and out of Hollywood for pilot season, I may have to thicken my accent or hear that, physically, I’m not Latino. I not only am, but there’s another 50,000 people who look exactly like me.
I feel like I’m kind of faking something if I’m talking as myself and putting on an accent.
On my best day, I cannot do Scottish people. I don’t even believe that’s a real accent, to be honest with you. I think they probably sound like us when they’re in the house. It’s how they keep people away from them.
I had a roommate who refused to believe that there were black people from Australia and that I just had this accent. I got frustrated. I’m saying, ‘mate, you’ve never heard of Aboriginals?’ And he definitely never heard of the Torres Strait Islands.
To cultivate an English accent is already a departure away from what you are.
Americans aren’t good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.
I have a funny accent in every language.
I grew up in the Middle East. My folks have a very thick, kind of Oklahoma accent; that’s where I was born. But we moved to the Middle East right after I was born, so I guess we were surrounded by English people and French people.
They were looking for boys who could speak with an English accent for the movie ‘Lord of the Flies.’ I had been abroad enough so I knew that accent.
There were stereotypes: you are from the communist country so you are not a hard worker. You talk awkwardly and speak with an accent and you don’t have any high education like us so you are basically stupid. And I am shorter than South Koreans – I was malnourished when I was young. It made me believe I was a loser.
I think the hardest thing about doing an accent, especially with a Missouri accent, is making sure that you’re not mumbling with the words so your diction is clear.
I’m not really much of an actor, so when I started on ‘The Daily Show,’ I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
The foreign accent was a promise, and indeed, all over the country, European imports added spice to the sciences, the arts, and other areas. What one had to give was not considered inferior to what one received.
Generally, nowadays, I’m using my own accent because casting directors want it; they like that.
A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.
I think I’m going to keep my Irish accent forever now in any movie I make, because chicks dig it and that’s all I care about now!
Today’s accent may be on youth, but the stress is still on the parents.
Balthazar has a great New York vibe with the accent of a Parisian brasserie. I usually have the corned beef hash with a fried egg on top and wash it all down with Krug Champagne.
