She lost her British accent in this film so many times it was beyond irritating. When I saw the trailer I assumed that her character was American because she had lost her accent in most of the scenes they chose for it. Maybe I'm just insane, but I feel as if I'm the only person with this opinion.
-- I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
No I noticed it come in and out as well.
shareIt was suppose to be a northern accent- yorkshire to be precise. Certain words in Northern tongue are pronounced the same as American- bath, dance, class- rather than the more recognizable 'barth' sound. See Daphne from the TV show Frasier.
A British northern friend of mine is always assumed to be from East coast America when she goes there.
She was supposed to have the same accent that Daphne has? Cause if so...she failed haha, I love her accent and Anne Hathaway's was just...bad, imo.
-- I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
I didn't make it past 20 minutes, her accent was driving me nuts - was it Scottish, Yorkshire, generic English or American, because they all cropped up in the same scenes!
shareTotally agree! At times she sounded British and then Scottish with American thrown in.
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I think she was just going for an upper middle class south east England accent that Americans call the 'British' accent.
This UK accent is probably the easiest to try to impersonate, whereas a Northern one, especially Yorkshire is quite tough to get right. How many Southerners on tv do we see getting it completely wrong.
So I imagine Anne just worked on the 'British' accent for ease and time, especially if she isn't good with accents. As we can see we her dodgy 'British' accent. If she couldn't master that there isn't a snowballs chance in hell that she could master a Yorkshire accent.
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she sounded like a walace in gromit character
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It wasn't that she lost her British accent it is rather that there are lots of different British accents and she couldn't hold to a single accent through the film....
...actually and rather annoyingly she was changing accents from one sentence to the next within the same scene...
...and there was never any rationale for the accent change (eg it wasn't because she moved to a different part of the country)
By way of explanation.... if you're American then imagine NYC versus LA versus Atlanta versus Montana, upper class versus urban versus small town, etc.
Britain may be a small country but we have a large number of accents, some found with only a small geographical area (eg 10-20 miles). Personally I can think of at least 20 different 'British' accents that I could identify and locate by class/geography eg:
- Queens English/Received pronounciation
- Public school English
- Estuary English
- Urban lingo/chav
- Cockney
- Essex
- Suffolk
- Birmingham
- Derbyshire
- Nottinghamshire
- Hampshire/South Coast
- Bristol
- West Country (Somerset/Devon/Cornwall)
- Yorkshire
- Manchester
- Lancashire
- Scouse (Liverpool)
- Geordie
- Cumbrian
- Glaswegian
- Lothian/Edinburgh
- Borders
- Aberdeen/Grampian
- Highland
- Western Isles
- Belfast
- Northern Irish
- Southern urban Welsh
- Vallies Welsh
- Northern Welsh-Welsh
And those are just the variations that I personally could distinguish... someone from the north would tell me that what I've called Geordie breaks down into different Geordie, Gateshead, Sunderland, Middleborough accents.
I'm British. We have lots of accents. None of them sound like hers.
shareSorry but I have to rant.
I'm American and I know she was doing a piss poor job in this film. I remember when I heard that they were making a movie of this; I was sooooooo effing happy. (fan of the book!) Then I saw that Anne was going to be in it and saw the trailer, I hoped she would do good. Boy, I was so wrong. She basically ruined this movie for me. This could have been one movie I would have loved putting in my favorites but Anne's accent threw me off and I just hated watching it. I only watched it once but honestly the first 30 mins I debated whether to stop watching but I continued anyway.
What I really want answered is; Were the casting director(s) stoned while casting Anne? Is it just because she's a "Hollywood" actress and they want her star power to bring Americans to watch this?
Honestly, do not blame Anne for the terrible acting. It should be the casting director's fault. There is no excuse. Their job is to cast the right actor for the role and she was not it. There are hundreds of British, Scottish, Irish & Australian actors in Hollywood now that can carry a perfect American accent. Which means they are perfectly cast for their role. Hugh Laurie is a wonderful example. Some people who didn't know him from his previous work were completely convinced that Hugh was an American. That is a perfect actor cast for his role. Anne was just wrong for this part.
There I'm done ranting. Thanks for reading.
Loved the book and am giving it a second chance, however it is sooooo off putting.
As others have said she was totally wrong for the part.
Smeg!
The accent doesn't really matter. The film was such a crapfest that a little thing like a bad accent could not have made it any worse than it was.
shareI came here to ask about that, too. There was actually only three words in the movie where I was reminded that she was trying to have an accent. Other than that she sounded American to me. English is not my first language so I can't distinguish different accents and dialects that well. But she did definitely NOT sound British. That be said, I actually enjoyed the film and was able to forget the whole thing with the accent while watching.
shareI agree, her 'accent' was embarrassingly bad. Both of the leads were miscast, which is such a shame because the book is wonderful.
I'm not sure if Anne Hathaway had a dialect coach but they either tried immensely hard and she couldn't get it or they should be fired.