...she has giant dentures in her mouth.
Or as Howard Wolowitz put it, on the Big Bang Theory:
Imitating Raj's American accent: "I think I'm talking in an American accent, but it really sounds like I'm wearing a set of giant dentures."
Here's the video clip. This is what I hear every time British actors try to do American accents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlQttTuYREc
Majority of people out there don't give a flying *beep* about accents. If they did, everyone would complain about Appu Indian accent every white person thinks Indians have.
shareI love Rachel Weisz's accent. I don't know why they force them to sound like Americans. No one cared when Arnold Schwarzenegger worked for the CIA in True Lies. Kinda funny....but it still worked.
shareRachel Weisz has a beautiful voice. I could listen to her voicing Saphira the dragon in 'Eragon' all day. And I agree that this newish trend of having actors and actresses take on different accents seemingly at the drop of a hat is annoying. It doesn't take a genius to work out that an actor or actress in most cases will give their best performance in their own accent, so just use it!
Another thing that bugs me is the mania for dyeing actresses hair all the time. When was the last time you saw an actress with healthy, shiny hair? Apart from young child actresses whose hair hasn't yet been destroyed by chemical warfare.
"The players of The Game are the scum of the earth"
I thought Rachel Weisz's American accent was perfectly fine in this, though as a Brit I generally think our actors have a better hit rate with American accents simply because we're exposed to US films and telly from a very young age, while I can't imagine American children are exposed to the same amount of British entertainment. (They even dumbed down 'Philosopher's Stone' to 'Sorceror's Stone' for goodness sake!)
Anyway, in a fully globalised 21st Century, people can pretty much come from anywhere in the world, and I completely agree with your point that you shouldn't force an actor to adopt an accent unless absolutely necessary, for fear of giving them extra baggage to steal their attention away during their performance. (It's why subtitles are always preferable to dubbing, in representing a performance in foreign language cinema.)
What's so silly in this instance though is that she has a doctorate in a highly specialised field, so she literally can come from anywhere in the world. The most obvious answer for the writer would be to have the scientist come from Oxford Uni or Cambridge Uni, given Weisz actually did her BA at (drum roll) Cambridge!
''This is the best bad idea we have, sir. By far.''
American actors can't do British accents, as a general rule, but Brit actors seem to develop the craft. Maybe it's the difference between producing actors versus producing movie stars? The British system seems to produce a well-rounded performer, as opposed to a glam person who can step into clichéd, cardboard roles? Rachel was fine here, and also, in Runaway Jury.
I can cite an exception: in the mini-series Bleak House, Gillian Anderson (of X-files fame) played the role of a tragic British woman of nobility, hiding a dark secret from her past. Gillian was born in Chicago, but trained in the U.K. in her teens. Considering the star power in the cast (and the number of excellent native British actresses available), I think her selection for this role was quite a tribute to her dialect skills.
Also: Jennifer Ehle played Lizzie Bennet in the acclaimed (original) Pride and Prejudice mini-series, opposite the luminary Colin Firth. Ehle was born in N.C.
Robin Wright-Penn played Buttercup (she used an English accent to match Carl Elwes) in Princess Bride. I thought she was British for years, but she is an American actress (born in Dallas).
An example of Brit actors playing famous Americans:
Ralph Fiennes - Charles Von Doren
Paul Scofield - Mark Von Doren (Quiz Show)
And here's curious one: Jim Carter (the head butler in Downton Abbey) played 'Blackie', a comic gun-wielding henchman for the bad guys in the tribute-comedy-western Rustler's Rhapsody
:-) canuckteach (--:
Another thing that bugs me is the mania for dyeing actresses hair all the time. When was the last time you saw an actress with healthy, shiny hair? Apart from young child actresses whose hair hasn't yet been destroyed by chemical warfare.
She nailed it perfectly. Me not knowing she was British upon watching the film. I didn't realize she was British until I heard her interview in the bonus footage.
shareOh, just can it. How long is that stick that's up your arse?
shareYou sound British... I seem to have hit a nerve. And I assume you're just fine with Americans doing horrible English accents?
Mirror inspector is a job I could really see myself doing.
Oh, that long.
I just watched this film again and the only accent I noticed was Kenny the factory supervisor with the broad Aussie accent. Although... there may have been some asians in the film, and I'm pretty sure a couple of them were in the same super-soldier program. But maybe that's acceptable since they didn't really have speaking roles...
I didn't assume Weisz's character was obliged to be born and bred in the USA... I thought her job description required excellence research science in the field of genetics. Maybe the OPs point is that only Americans could understand something so complex?
Until I saw the heading for this post I had no idea that anyone considered her spoken English to be inadequate. Maybe standards Increased in some parts of the USA, now I am a little concerned about meeting these new standards myself.. but even I had no trouble whatsoever understanding what any of the characters in the film were saying.
There was no point in the movie that Weisz's accent was noticeable, never mind intrusive.
I thought Weisz and Norton and Renner were all excellent.
I assume the stick is very long, it may have penetrated the brain.
She used the same accent utilized in "Constantine".
She was not even working for CIA. She was a scientist working for an American research firm (which only had ties to the CIA) so did not need to even be American. So there was really no reason for her to not simply use her normal English accent. Nobody would even think twice about it.
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Rachel is gorgeous in this and her accent is a complete non-issue.
Her character could very well be a British scientist who has spent years working in the U.S. As such, her accent probably would fluctuate between the two. No big deal.
She can't do an English accent either.
shareI have always found the topic of accents odd as they can be so varied for so many reasons. I for example am Australian but do not have an accent that really is from any particular country as a result (I still get asked every week where I am from when I was borne less then a twenty minute walk away). As a result of this I don't really care or notice problematic accents unless they completely drop one accent change into another and then back again (cough Silent Hill Revelations).
Film Reverie: http://filmreverie.blogspot.com.au/
My film diary: http://letterboxd.com/filmreverie/
It's the same when others have tried to do Australian accents, like Meryl Streep in Evil Angels....awful!!
shareRDJ's pretty good at an Aussie accent (Tropic Thunder).
shareNo way. RDJ's Australian accent is HORRIBLE. Jude Law's Aussie accent in Contagion was horrible. Both actors in Pacific Rim did a nauseating job of the Aussie accent - strangely enough though, the New Yorker did a better job than the Brit.
The best Aussie accent I've heard in a film was from Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke, but I only saw parts of that movie over 15 years ago. So I can't truly remember if it's good or not!
Charlie Hunnam has one of the worst American accents I've ever heard outside of Tom Felton and Gerard Butler.
Robert Kazinsky's wasn't too awful, honestly. I mean, I'm no Aussie, but I've heard plenty of RL aussies.
Frankly, you all can't pull off American any better than we can pull off Aussie. But even Chris Hemsworth and Liam Hemsworth have awful American accents. And it's not that hard, it's just a bland lack of nothing.
This is also coming from someone who thinks Kiwi and Aussie accents are awful, literally next to French, they're my least favorite accents. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me.
You also realize accents are subjective. Period. And in any given area there could be dozens of different accents.
The Kiwi accent is probably my least favourite accent in the world, along with California Valley Girls and teenage Australians. How the hell young Aussies sound the way they do with the parents they have is beyond me...
Then again, in the 1920s/30s/40s/50s etc. radio broadcasters had to put on stupid Pom accents while they were broadcasting, so there would have been a lot of Aussies back then who would hate the way I speak now. I've been told that I sound really Australian - but I've even had squeaky voiced Americanised teenage wankers tell me I sound like a bogan. Those confused little shee-uts.
Not the first time.
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