How do you 'do' an American accent?

[Edi]

Watching the actor who plays Dr. House on the show House speaking in a perfect English accent

Dude ... "the actor who plays Dr. House"?

You mean to tell me you have no idea who Hugh Laurie is?

Don't tell me you've never seen Black Adder, for example?

Or the Jeeves series where he plays Bertie Wooster...

Edi

[Admiral Valdemar]

Or A Bit Of Fry And Laurie.

[Bertie Wooster]

Watching the actor who plays Dr. House on the show House speaking in a perfect English accent

Dude ... "the actor who plays Dr. House"?

You mean to tell me you have no idea who Hugh Laurie is?

And if *that* doesn't leave me without a stain on my conscience, then I don't know *what* it doesn't leave me without a stain on.

[kheegster]

I think the biggest thing is that brit actors are trained to be able to do a wide variety of regional accents. So jumping from one to another isn't too difficult. American actors usually aren't. So they sound like shit.

This is true. A Scouse (Liverpool) or Geordie (Newcastle) accent, for example, is more far removed from Oxford English than a typical American East Coast accent, so a properly trained English actor would have no problems mimicking an American accent.

[FSTargetDrone]

I always enjoyed the majority of secondary American characters on The X-Files who were clearly Canadian. I didn't know there were so many of you living in the US, from Philadelphia to Podunk.

And you can easily pick out some of the Canadian actors in nBSG.

[Lord Woodlouse]

The American actor [James Marsters] in Buffy/Angel who plays Spike manages ok with the English accent he does, and he mentioned that the British actor [Anthony Stewart Head] who plays Giles, in real life has an accent like Spike's.

His accent is imperfect, but it's not as bad as some. Head has a vague Essex accent, but I suspect it's mostly disapeared with misuse. He probably prefers to think of his accent as grounded in his native homeland but, like Patrick Stewart (who has a recognisable Yorkshire accent to me), has mostly lost it in favour of what might be called a "stage accent".

David Boreanaz, however, has a piss-poor Irish accent.

Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) is, to me, one of the most English people I can think of. Him and Stephen Fry seemed to essentially make a living for a while out of being posh upper-class Englishmen. He seems to put on a very strong American accent (which I believe he also did for Stuart Little), from what I've heard of him.

I have to say I can do a better southern (American) accent than I can an ordinary New England one. I always practice with the Clinton speech "I did naaaayt haaayve sexual relations with thaaayt woman, Monica Lewinski".

[Crown]

Lucy Lawless when playing Xena lost her Kiwi accent and did a Californian one pretty damn well.

[Walsh]

It is fairly easy for an ordinary Australian to do some sort of American accent, and our actors can do all sorts of accents.
American actors usually have trouble doing an Australian accent.

This might be due to the sheer volume of foreign programming that we are exposed to, name your five favourite shows or films of all time and I bet most are American or otherwise foreign (the Simpsons, Lost, Deadwood, Firefly, and Fawlty Towers for me). We probably watch as much foreign media as we do our own.

As a side note, Hugo Weaving did a good job of suppressing his accent in V for Vendetta and LotR, and same for Russell Crowe in some of his films.

The other day I was watching Ripley's Believe it or not, and when an Australian revhead was preparing to do a car jump they had subtitles on when he was talking, and he didn't even have that strong of an accent. Is this some sort of aid for certain people, or do some Americans actually need the subtitles to understand?

[Lord Woodlouse]

It is fairly easy for an ordinary Australian to do some sort of American accent, and our actors can do all sorts of accents.
American actors usually have trouble doing an Australian accent.

This might be due to the sheer volume of foreign programming that we are exposed to, name your five favourite shows or films of all time and I bet most are American or otherwise foreign (the Simpsons, Lost, Deadwood, Firefly, and Fawlty Towers for me). We probably watch as much foreign media as we do our own.

As a side note, Hugo Weaving did a good job of suppressing his accent in V for Vendetta and LotR, and same for Russell Crowe in some of his films.

The other day I was watching Ripley's Believe it or not, and when an Australian revhead was preparing to do a car jump they had subtitles on when he was talking, and he didn't even have that strong of an accent. Is this some sort of aid for certain people, or do some Americans actually need the subtitles to understand?

Hugo put on a passable Yorkshire accent for when he voiced the fake informer, too.

[FSTargetDrone]

The one thing I've noticed about British Actors doing American accents, like Damian Lewis or Christian Bale, is that they appear to be pinching the muscles around their chins together when they speak, and occaisionally slur the initial consonants of some words.

For the small part he played in Wind Talkers (uggh), Jason Isaacs managed a very good North East accent.

That's interesting about Damian Lewis, the "pinching" you note. I'd never noticed that in all of Band of Brothers and had no idea he was British until afterwards. But I just quickly looked at an episode of BOB and you're right, there is that weird "pinching" sort of thing!

[Ryushikaze]

I just open my mouth and it comes out naturally.

Though, I do agree that diversity of accents growing up definitely helps with the learning of new ones. I grew up in the south, where there are about as many drawls as people, watched british television, etc, and I have no problems with accents (save a few upper class british ones which I just keep slipping out of), and have occasionally been told I sound like a native when speaking foreign languages. Mostly, it's learning to hold your lips and jaw like the accent you are attempting to imitate, and it helps to simply babble to try and figure out just how your lips move and the variations different positions make.

[Elfdart]

I think the biggest thing is that brit actors are trained to be able to do a wide variety of regional accents. So jumping from one to another isn't too difficult. American actors usually aren't. So they sound like shit.

This is true. A Scouse (Liverpool) or Geordie (Newcastle) accent, for example, is more far removed from Oxford English than a typical American East Coast accent, so a properly trained English actor would have no problems mimicking an American accent.

Britain always had many more accents and always will, and American accents are getting pretty homogenized as well. I've lived in the South all my life and I don't sound much different from most other Americans. The Coastal Southern WASP accent of people like my Mom's side of the family doesn't exist for people under 50 (instead of saying remember, they say "remembah"). There are maybe five major accents in the US: Black, Redneck, Generic Murkan, New York and Upper Midwest. So a British actor who can do a dozen or more accents in his own country can easily pick up one or more American ones. Except Laurence Olivier, who was as embarassing trying to do an Upper Midwest accent in The Betsy as Keanu Reeves was trying to sound English in Dracula.

[Vendetta]

Britain always had many more accents and always will,

I don't think we necessarily have more accents, but we do have almost the same number of different accents packed much more closely together. There's as much difference, for example, between northern and southern US accents as there is between the north and south of England.

Anyway, I don't do an "American" accent. I do some hilariously bad impressions of New York, Chicago, and N'awlins, as the situation demands. Mostly this is through observation of the real thing.

David Boreanaz, however, has a piss-poor Irish accent.

The guy should stop trying. When he plays it natural he's pretty good. When he tries to put on a particular accent or persona, he falls to bits.

[Fire Fly]

Based on my own experiences with languages and talking with others, the small issues which really set American English apart from other dialects of English are:

• -less stress on vowels: cahn't vs. can't
  
  -less stress on hard consonants, such as t's: butter vs. budder
  
  -sometimes, dropping the last hard consonant: Do you want some vs. Do you wan some
  
  -American English tends to utilize the back part of the mouth more than the front part of the mouth
  
  -American English speech tends to be slower and in a lower pitch

[fusion]

Californian style is more distinct style, at least to me, a Californian. More of the vowels are stretched out and seemed to be more mumbled, guys, or quicker and more concise for girls. It uses more upper portion of the throat opposed to the whole throat.

[Broomstick]

Patrick Stewart, I'm told, is an American who acquired the British flavor to his voice by living in England for many years.

Stewart is born-and-bread in Huddesfield, Yorkshire! You don't get much more English than that. He even does TV adverts for Huddesfield university due to his roots in the area.

Then obviously I was told wrong!

That's the problem with hearsay! It's sooooo frequently wrong.

[Enigma]

Watching the actor who plays Dr. House on the show House speaking in a perfect English accent

Dude ... "the actor who plays Dr. House"?

You mean to tell me you have no idea who Hugh Laurie is?

Don't tell me you've never seen Black Adder, for example?

I didn't connect the two until you pointed it out. So I can uncheck him under the column "relatively unknown actor"

[Broomstick]

I don't know what she sounds like normally, but she's actually a flappy-headed Canuck. According to IMDB she moved to NZ when she was 4 but presumably left there sometime in her teenage years to do films here in the States.

Anna Paquin can do English accents well. In Steamboy and Laputa: Castle In The Sky, she does them very well. The former is actually surprising, since it's a broad Lancashire accent. The fact that the Japenese actually know there's more to England than London isn't new, but that an North American actor could emulate such an accent so well.

If she moved to New Zealand when she was four her language skills and parts of her brain were still in a formative stage. That probably accounts for her normal speaking voice not being a standard North American anything, and might also account for her ability to imitate other accents, as she is, in a sense, "polyaccented" in the way a child raised in a bilingual household is polylingual.

[Broomstick]

I have to say I can do a better southern (American) accent than I can an ordinary New England one. I always practice with the Clinton speech "I did naaaayt haaayve sexual relations with thaaayt woman, Monica Lewinski".

I don't know why, but Brits do tend to do Southern American better than most other American dialects.

[Broomstick]

There are maybe five major accents in the US: Black, Redneck, Generic Murkan, New York and Upper Midwest.

Do we live in the same country?

What, no Boston accent? Are you kidding?

And while most of them would rather die than admit it, "Redneck" and "Black" are so close they're almost the same, and frequently the only difference is the skin color of the speaker.

I can detect noticable differences between Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis, to say nothing of Appalacian, one of my brothers-in-law is from Brooklyn and my nephew on that side definitely sounds like he's from New York.

There are a LOT more than just five accents/dialects in the US! Even if many of them aren't well known.

[Broomstick]

The other day I was watching Ripley's Believe it or not, and when an Australian revhead was preparing to do a car jump they had subtitles on when he was talking, and he didn't even have that strong of an accent. Is this some sort of aid for certain people, or do some Americans actually need the subtitles to understand?

Lest you forget, there are a LOT of people in the US, including a sizable chunk of citizens, who are originally from somewhere else and for whom English is a second language - like, for instance, the current Governor of California. Such people may be quite familar with the local American dialect, but have difficulty with other English language accents, so yes, it is to help people who have trouble with English in unfamilar accent.

[Spin Echo]

I've been told by several people that unlike the British, Americans don't have proper vowels, only dipthongs.

The other day I was watching Ripley's Believe it or not, and when an Australian revhead was preparing to do a car jump they had subtitles on when he was talking, and he didn't even have that strong of an accent. Is this some sort of aid for certain people, or do some Americans actually need the subtitles to understand?

I wish some of the Kiwi's here came with subtitles. Took me forever to realize they were saying "Sweet as" and not complementing me on my fine posterior.

[Walsh]

Lest you forget, there are a LOT of people in the US, including a sizable chunk of citizens, who are originally from somewhere else and for whom English is a second language - like, for instance, the current Governor of California. Such people may be quite familar with the local American dialect, but have difficulty with other English language accents, so yes, it is to help people who have trouble with English in unfamilar accent.

I knew there had to be a better explanation, ta.

I wish some of the Kiwi's here came with subtitles. Took me forever to realize they were saying "Sweet as" and not complementing me on my fine posterior.

I remember having a Kiwi teacher for English in high school. The accent is a source of endless mockery for many comedians .

Do you remember the 'Scared Weird Little Guys'? "Oh guv me fufty sux buts of fush and chups".

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

Yet Americans doing English accents never seems to translate as well. For prime example I give you Keanu Reeves in Dracula as John Harker. Truly one of the worst American actors playing an Englishman examples I've ever heard.

While I agree that Keanu Reeves is certainly not the actor to call for Accent work. I have heard(of) worse. I've heard that Mischa Barton did an English accent horribly, then again she isn't much of an actress either. There are other examples out there but I can't think of any more offhand.

But I do disagree with you sentiment on American actors taking on British accents.There have been lots of great accent work from American actors, and far worse than Keanu Reeves. (who while Lousy wasn't as bad as I remember, at least in the sense that it didn't distract me from)

Some Examples:
Robert Deniro in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein did a great job. I didn't even know that was Deniro at all.
James Marsters was another guy who did a solid English accent on Buffy and Angel.

[Vendetta]

Marters' accent is OK, but there's something about it that doesn't quite ring true, mainly because it's lacking any regional identity, he doesn't sound like he's from anywhere in England, which when you actually listen as an Englishman means the accent does fall flat.

It's better than some, but not perfect.