My mum made a conscious decision not to teach me any Indian languages so I wouldn’t talk with an accent.
If I’m doing different accents, I feel like I’m acting. If I’m doing my own accent, I feel like I’m saying someone else’s dialogue as myself.
I don’t aspire to just play things that are like me. Whether the accent is Taiwanese or British or Canadian – that is the very craft in which I was trained. It is my absolute privilege and honor to do that.
I like to mumble when I act, ’cause I think it’s more realistic. For some reason, the impediment has given me the accent of a Mexican gangster.
I would pay good money for a British accent.
I’m a bit like a chameleon with my accent.
I was born in New York and moved to London with my family when I was five. I did have an American accent for a couple of months, and then it went a way.
There’s a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out.
It has to be a very specific role for me because of my accent. I can’t complain; I’ve been working since I got to LA. But it is hard. I have no training as an actress so I try whatever I do like school, because I’m learning.
I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.
I don’t stay in accent or anything, but internally, I get quite dark and destroy myself a little bit. But that’s what I do, and I enjoy it. It’s how I do my work.
It’s always nice to have somebody with the same accent when you’re working in a foreign country.
I have a smaller bottom lip, but in ‘Wheeler,’ I had a lip over my lip. It’s fat, and it helped with my accent.
Alec’s Spanish is getting better and better. His accent is very good.
Some of the Junior Boys’ textures may be borrowed from synthpop but, formally, their songs would be impossible without twenty years of the rave discontinuum. And where synthpop was self-consciously European, the Junior Boys have pioneered an electronic Pop that speaks in a Canadian accent.
My mother has only just got over the fact that I will never play Shrek’s sister – because of the Scottish accent, she thought I’d be perfect.
My mom has a very high-pitched voice, and there are some similarities between her and the voice I use on ‘Big Bang,’ although my mom has the Jersey accent, so I took that out. But the tone of the voice is very similar to my mother’s.
When I first went to acting school, they made me lose my accent, which is very upsetting for me. The first day of Shakespeare class, I remember the professor was like, ‘Oh, boy. Oh no, no, no, no. No, no, no,’ and sent me to a voice and speech class to get rid of the accent immediately.
Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole.
I made some flippant remark about not wanting my son to grow up with an American accent, and the next thing I knew, there were people in America suggesting I head back to Britain if I was unhappy at such a prospect.
I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.
I don’t judge people by their accent, or how they word things, or how grammatically correct their speech is. Some of the smartest men in the world couldn’t spell. I judge a person by their character.
I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that’s rather silly.
Tennessee Williams was a gifted talker with a beautiful accent and we had lots of things in common.
A voice and an accent are two very different things. The voice of a man is how he speaks from his heart, right in the middle of him… And then you stick an accent on top of that.
I guess if they ever do a remake of ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ I could play the Meryl Streep part. I’ve got to work on my Polish accent. Maybe I’ll be the definitive King Lear one day. You know, if they ever feel that King Lear should be more Jewy.
Shakespeare in Love… such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I’m a sucker for the accent.
Well, I did two lines on a TV show called ‘Cleopatra 2525’ really badly with an American accent; it was terrible!
To be good in playback, you need to modulate your voice and sing with an accent that can provide some freshness.
I’m one of those idiots; when I’m working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till make-up comes off.
I would get a lot of roles for the ethnic friend and then I would go in for that and not be ethnic enough. They wanted an Indian accent. They wanted something more very visually, clearly specific.
My mother had an incredibly strong accent – although I couldn’t hear it – and she was the main person there, so I’ll have learnt to speak English from her.
They just love the Irish accent in the States. But I just talk really fast because I’m from Cork. It’s my speed that really throws them, especially when I get nervous. Doing interviews there is really hard because you can’t hear a word I’m saying!
I was actually born in New York. We lived there until I was three so I grew up watching Sesame Street and hearing the accent. You are a sponge at that age, soaking everything up.
I’ve been banging on about doing stuff in Birmingham for years and years, and everyone says ‘We can’t, it’s the accent thing.’ For some reason it’s a very difficult accent to get right, harder even than Geordie.
I was hesitant about doing too big a role in an American movie because it meant losing my German accent.
I find the scouse accent a bit difficult, but I will try my best.
Whatever I talk about onstage is just my story. My fan base is broad… We all have the same mom; it’s just that ours has an accent.
The East Texas accent is a famously difficult accent to do.
Don Cornelius gave me an incredulous look regarding my accent. I lessened it; he gave a nod of approval. Instantly, I felt ashamed. I had made my first conscious effort not to sound ethnic.
My younger self would be proud that I’d made it and that someone with my accent had got on the radio and telly. It would make her happy that I’d stuck to my guns.
People say there’s no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn’t because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
My father spoke with something very similar to a 1920s newscaster type of English, and I learnt that accent of power in post-colonial Zimbabwe. So I learnt that, and I learnt how to copy it, and I learnt how to shift in and out of it, but also talk like my mother’s relatives in the village.
‘Fast & Furious’ is Hollywood’s ‘Dabangg.’ It is that big there, so it obviously feels amazing to have played a part in it. The role is small but very interesting. People will see me in full Hollywood accent, and the character is not like typical Indian character.
I’ve never played Scots or got the chance to do my Scottish accent. I’m always trying it out in auditions, but they always say no. I’d love to act in a Scottish accent for once.
Tell me the truth – do you think I’ve lost my Southern accent? I feel it comes back to me only when I’m shouting at fights or at baseball games.
I have been in rooms with people arguing over a character that’s not really fleshed out: that, just because the surname is Latino, that automatically means you have an accent.
There’s always a certain kind of homework you have to do when there’s an accent involved.
My accent is not very refined as it has the typical U.P. touch. So I am trying to overcome that.
Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.
