One Day could very well turn out to be the most distracting movie of 2011. Read the full post.
Aug 23
2011
01:58 PM ET
LIFE names 'The Worst Accents in Movie History.' Rough week, in'nit Anne Hathaway?
- Comments 532
- Add comment
I love Ralph Fiennes, but his stab at an American accent in Quiz Show is laughable. And speaking of Disney’s delightful accent debacles, who could forget Hayley Mills butchering Boston and California accents in the original Parent Trap? Timeless!
To his defense, he was trying to mimic the real Charles Van Doran’s accent.
True. It’s more an upper class accent than a typical American accent (though there really is no such thing as a typical accent).
I’m glad about Anne Hatheway; maybe now she will disappear for like 5 years. She’s so grating.
This!!
jack, sorry man, anne is here to stay. The lady is talented.
Sure, if talented means annoying and bad at her job.
I thought I was the only one! I seriously can’t see any movie she’s in no matter how much the other actors or story intrigue me!
No, you are not the only one.
Can we just say that any American outside of Meryl Streep attempting any foreign accent is ridiculous?
Renee Zellwegger did a great job in Bridget Jones.
I thought Paltrow was British
This is such old news. Hathaway’s british accent was already horible in the movie Becoming Jane. Loved that flick but her terrible british almost ruined it for me then also.
Laura Linney in Mystic River! If you can’t do the accent DON’T!!!! I love Laura but listening to her butcher the South Boston accent was painful and distracting from an amazing film!
You ah ah king!
Try watching some BBC productions where the script calls for a Brit actor to put on an American accent. They invariably sound like James Cagney in a ’30s gangster film.
One of the WORST examples of this was Season 8 of MI-5 (Spooks), where an Irish actress, Genevieve O’Reilly, was hired to play an American CIA agent. The character was supposed to be from Boston, but Ms. O’Reilly did an southern accent that was absolutely horrendous. What made it even funnier was when she told Lucas North that she liked to use the alias “Violet Franklin” because it represented her favorite flower and her favorite American president. Yeah, somehow I don’t think she was talking about Franklin Pierce or FDR. Sorry, BBC writers, but Ben Franklin was never president.
I love when people from other countries get things wrong. Makes me feel better about our own ignorance.
Ooh Flyer, yes! That poor, poor woman. That was about the worst American accent I’ve ever heard. It was especially noticeable on words that ended in “r”. Each sentence was like a road trip through America.
Couldn’t agree more about Spooks! As bad as she was – and oh my, that was bad. I also found Megan Dodd’s accent (in the first season or so) bad…and she IS American. She just always sounded so phony that I kept waiting for her to be found out.
One of my least favorite accents was by a brit — Minnie Driver doing a midwest accent in Gross Point Blank. I guess since I’m from the midwest I know what she should sound like, and that wasn’t it. But I’ve heard her to American accents since that were much better.
I love Grosse Point Blank. So funny. I don’t mind her accent so much but you do notice that something isn’t quite right. It just doesn’t sound natural. You’re aware that she’s trying to speak differently than she normally does.
I love “As Time Goes By”, but the episodes with the American director…ugh. Flat, extremely nasal, and acts like a moron. Gets on my nerves.
Not that most people would notice, but anytime there is a Spanish speaker in a mainstream TV show or movie, they cast Hispanic actors who can’t do accents in Spanish. So, they are supposedly from Argentina, but have a super thick Mexican accent. Or, they are supposed to be Mexican and have a Puerto Rican accent. E.g., the weird twins in Heroes.
Although I’m not a native speaker, I know enough Spanish (and enough Hispanic people) to notice this ALL the time. It drives me insane.
Kevin Costner in Thirteen Days. I think it was a Boston accent. Whatever it was, it was painful to hear. “This is your report caaahhhhhdddd”. Ugh.
Cameron Diaz and James Marsden in The Box. I live in the area the movie is based in and no one talks like that! Their “accents” were so terrible I couldn’t even finish the movie!
I live in the area, too, and what was that? Ridiculous! Most annoying accent ever from Diaz. They got everything wrong in that movie.
Yeah…. I heard that the accents were probably the least of that movie’s problems. What accent was it supposed to be?
South-eastern Virginia. It was at least partially filmed at NASA Langley in Hampton, Va.
Although I liked First Knight, Richard Gere’s accent as Lancelot was pretty bad.
On the great list is Gwyneth Paltrow. She nails the accents.
Not to nitpick, but does anyone know what a 5/6th century British accent sounded like? Anglo? Saxon? Celtic?
No one in 5th century Britain would have been speaking English anyway. It didn’t fully develop as a language until after the Norman Conquest in 1066 (why it’s a mixture of Germanic, French, & Latin). In fact, Old English is so Germanic based that you can only recognize one word in maybe 20. Why I don’t think they should ask non-British actors to attempt British accents in movies like that.
Leo DiCaprio in The Departed and Shutter Island. The man needs to stop taking roles that need Boston accents. He just can’t do it.
When Nicolas Cage dropped that horrid “Italian” accent halfway through Captain Corelli’s Mandolin the movie improved immeasurably.
angelina jolie trying a british accent in the tourist, jake gylenhaal in prince of persia, and everyone in knockaround guys. so many good actors in that one so many bad accents
Anytime someone makes Sean Bean talk with an American accent, it makes me want to cry. North Country is the specific case that I can think of…but it’s all sad. (Could have something to do with the fact that I adore his natural accent and hate anyone who makes him change it…but whatever!)
Did anyone mention Diane Lane’s Boston accent in The Perfect Storm? Whenever I hear that, I get the urge to run to the kitchen and puncture my eardrums with a fork!
Second place is her old-timey Hollywood dialect in Hollywoodland.
THANK YOU!!! This is always my benchmark for bad accent comparisons. I can’t stand any DIane Lane movie just because of how badly she butchered it.
I didn’t see “Hollywoodland” but… for a great old-time accent of that sort, I think Jennifer Jason Leigh in “The Hudsucker Proxy” is brilliant. Others may disagree but that is tough to do and I think she nails it.