I typically only see praise for non-Americans portraying American accents so I am curious on if there’s been any that didn’t float the boat?

29 comments

  1. Boston accents are I guess really hard to do.

    Being from Boston I’ve NEVER heard a good faked one. It’s pretty glaring.

  2. Lauren Cohan has the worst American accent ever. She is/was Maggie on The Walking Dead.

  5. Dominic West as Jimmy McNulty on The Wire. The accent is excruciatingly awful.

    On the other hand Idris Elba’s accent was so good that for years I thought he was American.

  6. It feels like nobody can do a northern American accent without sounding like they’re having a stroke

  7. I don’t know of many actors that fail at a generic American accent- my guess is that it’s a pretty common and fairly easy-to-learn accent in acting schools. However, a lot of actors fail specific regional accents (Boston and even New York accents, Western, all sorts of southern accents- or assuming all southern accents are the same).

  8. not the accents per se but the lines/delivery of the English speakers in Squid Game was pretty rough

  9. I recently started watching *Miss Marple* (a British television show), and I really enjoy it. However, there was this one episode that involved an American soldier. Everything he said sounded weird and flat, similar to the way that someone sounds when they’ve been forced to read something out loud in a high school English class. At first, I just thought he was a bad actor. Then I realized that he was a bad *British* actor doing a terrible American accent.

  10. Clive Owen in Sin City is TERRIBLE. well he does an alright job acting but his accent is not good.

  12. Rebel Wilson was in a very short-lived tv show called like… Girls Night Out or something along those lines, following her immediate popularity from Pitch Perfect. I had never heard a terrible attempt at an American accent until I watched one single episode of that show on a plane.

  14. Most BBC shows that feature an American accent have bad ones.

    I love, love, love Horrible Histories, but their American accents are hilarious.

  15. Yes, Michael Caine in SECONDHAND LIONS. I love Michael Caine, but his fake sounding accent really ruined the movie for me.

  16. Nicole Kidman attempted a Southern accent in Cold Mountain that was, at best, cringeworthy.

    She stopped trying about 20 minutes in.

  17. Most notable British actors can do a pretty good American accent, but it always seems slightly over-enunciated maybe? Like the guy from “House” and the kid from the newer Spider Man movies. It’s like they say absolutely 100% of every damn word.

  19. I’ll occasionally see Californians trying to do other regional accents and leaving clear hints that they are Californians. Riley Keough in *Logan Lucky* is supposed to be pure Appalachian, but still refers to highways as “the 64” instead of just “64”.

  20. Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club springs to mind. Not every scene necessarily, but I feel it’s noticably bad when she pawns the dress and then again near the end when they’re at the diner.

  21. Benedict Cumberbatch kinda sucks at American accents, and [he can’t pronounce “penguins.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GnLDJAgrws)

    I think nobody notices his bad accents because his voice is so deep and he’s already a bit Strange. We see Cumberbatch’s linguistic fuck-ups as affectations of the characters he’s playing, rather than it just being a bad accent. Compare him to Hugh Laurie, who has a similarly deep voice, but is great at American accents.

    It’s one of those things you don’t notice until someone else mentions it, and then you can’t stop noticing. Now that I’ve said it and you’ve read this, you’ll notice as well. You won’t be able to *not* notice. Every couple of lines, Benedict Cumberbatch will say a single word in a way that no human has ever pronounced before. He’ll pronounce “car” as “core” and the rest of the sentence will be suspiciously fine. It’s like that single word is some kind of Easter egg, intended specifically to annoy pedantic internet blowhards like me.

    But I guess it’s a testament to Benedict Cumberbatch’s acting abilities that his bad accents don’t really matter. I don’t even know why he tries to do an American accent. He should just go the route of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who both reached a point in their careers when they decided to only act using their normal voices. In turn, their voices became their trademarks. Cumberbatch should do the same.

  22. Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown was hilarious.

    I saw someone else say something similar here about how one of the main ways foreigners mess up American accents is through over-annunciation. Through saying every single part of a word, stopping, then saying the next word like you’re being extremely stern with someone.

    We don’t talk like that. Words bleed into each other in American English just like all other English.

  23. Southern accents. Everybody thinks they are easy. But a lot of them in movies are just godawful. I’m looking at you, Julia Roberts

  24. Most Southern accents. Philly accents always sound like New York in movies. No- they are different. The only actor to pull it off is Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown.
    I’d also say that many accents are exaggerated in many movies- Boston, NY-staten island, Jersey, Texas, southern— there’s many kinds of southern accents but Hollywood seems to roll them into 1 big stereotype. Then everything else is just general.

  25. Brianna on Outlander. Takes me out of it every time she talks. No American enunciates that much.

  27. As an American, hands down, my favorite thing ever is people doing bad American accents. Particularly when it’s an Irish, Scottish, or English person doing it. I don’t know why I find it so funny.

    It’s even better if they hone in on a regional accent like New Jersey, Boston, or Maryland.

  28. There’s a movie adaptation of Bram Stoker’s **Dracula** and the Texas guy has the most hilarious accent you’ll hear in your life. So awful.

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