no one said that??
americans have been playing brits just as long as brits play americans. i think Hollywood has some raging bon3r for british actors playing americans for some reason. the problem with americans is that they always overdo the English accent, they sound like downton abbey auditions.
plus, anne Hathaway proved my point with the over-the-top posh sounding dialect. when brits do generic American accents, they don't sound insulting or offensively stupid. gary oldman, damian lewis, hugh laurie, henry cavill.
dick van dyke, renee zellweger, Keanu reeves, not many examples, but you get the point over-the-top, cringe-worthy English accents. very few American actors get it right without falling foul to the posh upper-class brit trope.
the only decent English accent I think ive came across is the actor who played the farmer in 'Babe'. He's American and does a spot on English accent, not too twee and posh, just right. Elijah Wood does an okay English accent too, it's not great, but it's not embarrassing.
"im beautiful your not" - me
"you're* " - you
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E_nineteen
10 years ago
Good points here, I agree with them all. And I do agree with the point that Americans don't do British accents that well, which is why there's uproar - because Brits notice. Whereas when Brits go and do American accents I hear a lot of Americans say they didn't even twig they were English (particularly the case with Damian Lewis).
Hathaway's accent was not good but it's a shame because it had a lot of potential. I wish she'd done some tighter work with a voice coach, really gone over every line. Yorkshire accents are challenging to even Brits but she had some convincing moments. Unfortunately it was just a bit all over the place. I'd say Brits have a similarly tricky job of doing regional US accents, but Martin Freeman seems to have nailed the Minnesota accent in Fargo... but I'm not from Minnesota, so I could be wrong!
Going on your Elijah Wood point - I think pretty much the entire cast of Lord of the Rings do pretty good accents. At least, none of them were noticeably bad or posh.
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rebkad
10 years ago
I think as well the character of Emma in this has a very specific accent. She is supposed to come from Yorkshire, a place with its own specific cultures, values etc... and had been hit hard economically in the 80s, when the film starts, so her voice actually means a lot to the story. That is why people are more peeved than normal, surely? I think Americans would similarly be a bit miffed if it was really obviously part of the story that someone should have a specific American accent, and the actor clearly hadn't managed it.
For some reason, Hathaway is always cast in iconic British roles, but she also always struggles with the accent, so to give the part to her might have made initial financial sense, but was probably a mistake for that reason. Tbh, British actresses tend not to get these types of parts, apart from maybe Keira Knightley, who might easily have been equally bad.
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