When I came to this country, people told me that if I wanted to teach and work here, I would have to take speech lessons to lose my accent. But it helped me greatly, because when people turned on the radio, they knew it was me.
Stuff like Buena Vista Social Club and Fela Kuti were quite a main thing to my childhood. As soon as I reached an age where I realized that Fela was singing in English, when I got past his accent, I loved the rawness of it, and the funk and the rhythm and the melody.
It’s easier to act in your own accent.
I wish I could adjust my voice, but it’s just what’s happened to me. It’s because I’ve lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I’ve never intentionally changed my accent at all.
For me, my taste isn’t limited to magical films. Whatever I read and I like, I go up for, and a lot of the time it’s an American accent which can be quite trying, but I’m working on it as much as I can.
We wanted to be ourselves, to sing and speak with our own accent and it was fantastic that we were not asked to change.
I would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though.
When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it’s absurd. There’s something to just being spontaneous.
It’s so rare that I get to do something in my own accent in my own hometown.
Sometimes I’ll go into a shop and speak in a different accent to see if I can pull it off. But then somebody will be like, ‘Where did you say you were from again…?’ And then I panic, and my accent dissolves, and I pretend like I wasn’t doing it in the first place.
My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.
‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’ was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It’s based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs.
The accent of a man’s native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
Well, I have a Norwegian father who emigrated to America in the 1950s, and he still speaks with varying degrees of an accent. Over my lifetime my ear has been well-tuned to that accent. Any first generation kid has that wonderful gift from their parents.
Colossus’ voice is not much different than mine, as Tim loved my natural color and range of voice, so we kept it and worked more on the Russian accent. The best note I received was to be authentic.
My dad hates reggae. He’s from St. Kitts, which is a really British island, with Victorian values. He doesn’t have a strong Caribbean accent. He didn’t play Caribbean music in the house. He was really into soul music, collecting soul 45s.
God bless my father, but he always spoke in this continental, literary accent, probably because he was a professor of comparative literature and he made the decision to speak with distinction.
I was born and raised in New York, so I was blessed – or some say cursed – with a strong New York accent.
I find people interesting and I love regional accents. I love the Norfolk accent actually but I haven’t heard much as I’ve only just arrived but I shall go out and find it.
Someone suggested elocution lessons but there is no way I am changing my accent, I’m proud of my roots.
I think, for the English accent, we don’t say our Rs, contrary to a standard American accent.
Everyone’s really sweet, really nice. The ‘Buffy’ fans always ask me to do Kendra’s lines in Kendra’s accent.
The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren’t a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.
I have had people come up to me in the street – one woman actually told me she hated my accent, she can’t believe I’m on the telly and my accent is so annoying. I ended up laughing because I thought, ‘this person doesn’t know me but she felt she could come up and slate my accent.’
I’m completely Americanized – I have an American accent, an American wife – but a residue of me is foreign.
I was at home on a very rare night off and the phone rang, and the person on the other end announced themselves in a Liverpudlian accent as being Paul McCartney.
Some accents people – internationally – can’t understand, also they come with baggage. London means a certain thing, Liverpool means a certain thing. Whereas with Welsh, he can be a middle-class man with working-class roots and still have an accent and it not be an issue.
I had a dialect coach to get an American accent, and then another dialect coach to come off it a bit. There is something deep and mysterious in the voice when it isn’t too high-pitched American.
I grew up three and a half hours outside of Chicago, but people would call me a ‘hick’ or ‘country boy.’ Maybe it’s because I talked with more of a country accent.
What I try to do with the accent of any character I play is not necessarily to do something that’s generic – an Indian accent and that’s how it sounds, for example. I think the accent needs to sound authentic on this person.
It’s hard to learn an American accent. Some of the Rs at the ends of words are incredibly hard.
I personally am not conscious of my accent.
As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing – one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.
As I am a Bengali and am used to conversing in Bengali and English, I thought my Hindi would show an accent.
I’m an American by accent, and I grew up in the States, living there between the age of three and 24.
I grew up in Teesside and it is really important to keep your regional accent because it is a big part of who you are.
I’m a Yente and I have a terrible accent.
Now, I don’t know about my peers, but I get nervous – okay, I genuinely freak out – when an actor starts trying on a Southern accent. That’s for Brits trying to find the easiest way to sound American.
There is a certain advantage to the British accent. I do notice that Americans love it; they think the we Brits are smarter than perhaps we are.
Supposedly I’ve got traces of an English accent, though I can’t hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who’s English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.
I don’t believe in the so-called Latino explosion when it comes to movies. Jennifer Lopez doesn’t have an accent. She grew up in New York speaking English, not Spanish. Her success is very important because she represents a different culture, but it doesn’t help me.
Inherently in us as Irish people, wherever you are in the world, when you hear an Irish accent, it’s like a moth to a flame. There’s a real personable pride and camaraderie about being Irish.
In my normal life, I do not speak with an accent. It’s harder for people to realize my hearing loss in everyday life.
Roxy Music’ and ‘For Your Pleasure,’ those exercises in learning and unlearning of accent and manners, are Pop’s equivalent of ‘The Talented Mr Ripley.’ The clothes , the bearing and the voice are faked, but not yet perfectly.
I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn’t see actresses as being working-class.
An agent once told me that if I would lose my English accent, I would never stop working in America.
Having an interview in English is difficult for me, but acting in English is much harder. Because when I’m acting in English, if someone points out bad pronunciation or accent, I cannot focus on my emotions anymore, so it was very hard.
New Jersey is very big. There are different areas of New Jersey. There is North New Jersey. There is like the center. There are a lot of actors from New Jersey that don’t speak with a New Jersey accent.
I always wonder whether I’ll get treated differently with a different accent.
I did use my own accent in a play once. It’s a very freeing, liberating experience. Actors are often asked to adopt a different accent, and sometimes a different voice, so when that’s taken away and you don’t have to think about it, that’s a lovely thing.
I toned down my accent at school; otherwise, people would pick on me.
Most Australians who’ve got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies.
I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
You may hear from my fabulous accent that I’m French!
When I went to London, they told me I spoke with a funny accent – English with a Chinese accent.
I was criticized a lot when I was singing in Korean. The producers and people from my agency would point out my accent and tones, and would tell me I sound too American to fit the local market.
