I'd like some feedback from the Brits...
How was Annette's accent? I thought she did a great job (though I'm an American and not really a good judge.) I can spot a bad accent - Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt CANNOT do an Irish accent. However, I think Irish and Scottish would be harder...
At any rate, I thought she was right on, but I'd like some feedback from across the pond!
I'd like to know that too, so bumping this one up :-)
Prog.
Thanks, Prog! Anyone want to answer????
shareWell, she was completely ignored by all the British awards so maybe it wasn't that good? I'm an American, but I thought maybe the snub was partly because of a bad British accent. But I also thought Bening was amazing.
...and that's all I have to say about that.
i didnt think she did too bad at all, it had me thinking at first if she was actually british after all. so had to come on here to make sure i want going mad and that she was american
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I watched this on DVD a week ago. I thought Annette Benings performance was worthy of the Oscar nomination. I don't think she has missed out on our BAFTAs. The BAFTA year starts a month before the OSCAR year so she will probably be nominated next year. It depends when the film was released over here also. Charlize Theron was in this years BAFTAs for Monster, even though she won the OSCAR last year. There are so many good British performances in the movie I can't believe it didn't get a single BAFTA nomination so watch out for it at next years awards.
And the accent... well as a Brit I could tell she was American, but I'm sure you guys can tell when Michael Caine or Kate Winslett do a US accent. It most certainly was not Don Cheadle Dick-Van-Dykesque Cock-er-ney... The way I judge it is "does it distract you from the movie because the accent is getting on your nerves...?" in this case I would say a resounding NO...
I thought she did a great job - in the accent department but more importantly in her portrayal of this wonderfully, insecure woman. There were a couple of accent slips but I think you needed to listen carefully. Delighful film!
shareUgh, her accent did distract me and got on my nerves. Throughout the film I kept wishing that Juliet Stevenson, who played the lead character’s dresser/costume assistant and personal assistant, had played the lead instead of Benning.
sharespeaking British English myself (lived in England for six years) I thought she did an excellent job - to be honest I didn't spot any major flaws. Sometimes it felt a tad snooty and everything but only to be expected, considering the movie setting and the fact that she's a theatre actress. It IS slightly different from the original British actors' accents but I was really very impressed.
shareHer accent is absolutely rubbish!!
Anyone else who thinks it's actually passable as a British accent must be on something.
Why didn't they just use a proper British actress?
The accent was somewhat affected, I think it was on purpose. Annette's character (Julia) had humble beginnings (country mouse from Jersey?). No doubt she carefully cultivated her accent which is slightly over the top.
shareI was blown away when I watched the bonus features on the DVD and heard the actor that played Tom Fennel (the young guy that Annette has a fling with) talk. He's British with a thick Scottish brogue. Watching the movie, it hadn't occurred to me that he wasn't American. It nearly always seems a little off to me when Brits play Americans (even very good actors like Anthony Hopkins in Nixon), but this guy was spot on. It might have been a little easier because it was kind of a stylized 1930's accent, but still, he did a great job.
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Gwyneth Paltrow? Her accent is all upper crust (and that's all she can play) and I am British so I can clearly hear that she's putting it on badly. (And it is a bad accent if you just listen to it).
You rarely meet or even hear anyone like that so why do American actors play those roles? They know nothing else. Yanks who put on Scottish or Irish accent are even worse. US versions of British accents are bloody terrible!
Use a British accent. Use a British actor. But that wouldn't go down well with US audiences. They don't want to see a Brit playing a Brit. They want to see a yank putting on a bad accent and version of a Brit.
Annette falls into this category.
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I totally agree with you about Gwyneth's accent. I am an American, but I can tell her British accent is fake from a mile away. I always thought the hype about her accent was ridiculous.
You are wrong though, if you think Americans don't want to see a Brit playing a Brit. I don't care what the nationality is of the actor playing a role, I just want them to do a good job. I agree that Annette's accent wasn't the greatest, but it didn't take away from her wonderful performance unless you allowed it to. I've seen movies with Brits playing Americans and I could spot the mistakes in their accents, but I didn't let it stop me from enjoying the movie if it was a good movie.
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I don't know why I can spot her accent as being fake, I just can. It does surprise me that a Brit would think it sounds authentic! I do like Gwyneth in movies and I loved her in Sliding Doors, so it isn't anything personal.
I agree with you that I loved all those actresses in every one of those roles. I've never heard another American voice unhappiness with Brits or Aussies playing American roles as long as they have given a good performance. I just want to enjoy a movie and never give it a second thought to the nationality of the actors. I think that maybe Brits really take offense at Americans playing Brits, but I don't really understand why. Maybe you have to be British to understand why that is offensive.
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It's been a while since I've seen either film, but I remember being disappointed by Kidman's accent in "The Others" as I kept hearing bits of her real accent slip in, although I did think her performance was very good and I'm not usually a fan of hers. The slip-ups were not appalling but I actually saw it on TV a couple of years after I saw "The Hours" where I was fine with her accent, so I watched expecting a better job. I didn't really like her performance in "The Hours"; it all felt so rigidly constructed from the mannerisms to the accent to THAT nose.
I thought Julianne Moore in "The End of the Affair" was very good. I've seen some people criticise it as a bit too plummy but given the context, time period and atmosphere of the book I think it was appropriate.
I, too, think that non-American actors with English as their first language tend to do English accents better which was why I was disappointed by Kidman. It's funny as I'm not American, but I can't stand Kidman's American accent because she adopts this breathy, girly tone when she uses it to disguise any slip-ups. I find it so annoying! I thought Blanchett's accents in "The Talented Mr Ripley", "The Missing" and "The Gift" were very good but I'm not from the US and I know that Southern accents are difficult so I may be wrong. I'm in the camp who thinks Gwyneth Paltrow's English accent is excellent, by the way, and I'm really not a fan of hers.
I think that British fans hate to see an American play someone British when there are perfectly good British actors available.
The accents that most Americans portray are cockney or upper-crust, which, like Annette Bening here, lays it on so thick it just sounds terrible.
The point is that since most movies around come from the USA, the producers and directors believe that they have to put in an American, as they tend not to put a relatively unknown British actor (only unknown to American audiences but known well in the UK and elsewhere) in a role where they would be supremely better.
Being Julia, Sliding Doors, Tomb Raider and Brigite Jones all had American actresses just to appease an American audience, and while British actresses might be better, the producers think that putting an American in a British role is guaranteed to give results. And that's not always the case.
It's not so much their ability to put on an British accent, they just want to American in there so the film will get more box office in North America.
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What? I immediately thought tom's accent sounded fake...I actually came to imdb specifically to verify that he wasn't really American. It is weird that they had an American actress playing a Brit and a British actor playing an American.
shareIt was fine -the point to bear in mind is that she plays an actress ,or in British theatrical parlance "a lovvie"(so called because they call each other love or darling)
It was slightly overstated -as would be the accent of any actress from the period .
It was designed as the speech of an overstated person who is always "on " and for whom every second is a performance opportunity
Fine performance in an average movie
Fred
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I dunno, I think if you're an actor you should be aloud to play any accent. I think the whole idea of an American playing a British person or a British person playing an american person is that they're stretching themselves and actually acting as a whole other person with a whole different accent. I have no problem with people from other countries playing Americans so I don't understand why people from other countries hate it when Americans play them. Do you guys really hate us that much? We're not all bad...
The spirit is eternal, deathless...
It's not about country of origin; it's just that many US actors fall into the trap of giving a poorly-informed American audience what they're expecting rather than a slice of what the accent really is. Give the people what they want!
Having said that, Annette Bening is very good in this, much better than the average female US actress when they have a stab at it, and only falls down occasionally, when she may be concentrating on character to the detriment of the character's (probable) habitual means of expression.
I thought she had a fairly decent accent, and I think she had to play the accent over the top because of the character originally being from New Jersey and her not wanting anyone to know of this fact. I've read on this board people being unhappy with Americans playing Brits and vice versa, but what about others playing roles that require a Southern American accent. Let's take Cold Mountain as an example. Hardly anyone from the cast that I recognize were really from the South. Most of the time this is done. Maybe because the film industry thinks it's easier to understand the accent if someone else is portraying the accent or whatever. I thought that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman did an okay job for them being British and Australian, but not for one second did I actually believe they were from North Carolina, which is where I'm from. It really didn't bother me though, because it's just a movie, and it was the best the actors could do. Oh, and as far as I can tell, not one single person in the whole film got the real accent even close to what Carolinians sound like.
"Once again the fruit of peace has become the jam of war"-"Femputer:Death by snoo snoo!"
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I had just made a mistake when typing. It's not like no one else has ever not made a mistake, but everyone on this board seems determined to keep reminding me of that mistake, so thanks, but I don't need people to keep telling me what others have already.
"Once again the fruit of peace has become the jam of war"-"Femputer:Death by snoo snoo!"
I'm British and Annette Bening's accent in this film was impeccable. I can't think of many American actors who can actually do an English accent (Meryl Streep certainly can't).
shareI can't think of many American actors who can actually do an English accent (Meryl Streep certainly can't).