Accent?

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i have nothing new to add. but it is a good point you make about her natural accent. i just saw junebug, and it has me thinking the same thing. i thought she might have a south african accent naturally, but i've only ever seen her in either british or american films, so if she does, i've never heard it. i wonder, though, where else she may have lived besides south africa and the states. in a lot of formerly colonialized countries, if you are a foreigner attending school, you'd probably attend a private school specifically for children of foreigners living abroad. in that case, it may not be so unusual for her to grow up learning british english. or maybe she's just a really gifted actor, and she can do a broad spectrum of accents with aplomb...i mean, isn't that what acting is about?

some south africans who have english backgrounds have a rather english-sounding accent. Embeth could have one of these and just adjusts it to make it more english when she's in british films. if her parents are british, this could have more effect.

I am an English speaking South African and I actually know someone who went to school with Embeth. She has still retained her South African accent, but she does pronounce her words beautifully (like a lot of drama students in South Africa) and has picked up a few British inflections.
Overall I was very impressed to hear her speaking in her natural accent in interviews. Makes me think that she's a geniune person who doesn't try to fake it - but when you're that good at switching accents who needs to fake it.

Ja, I read in Insig Magazine she describes her own accent as "mid-Atlantic".

I wonder what the major difference is between the South African accent and the British accent? To my untrained ears, it sounds British. Besides doing some homework and reading about South Africa's history... are there certain words that are pronounced differently that distinguishes the two?

Coz some joe shmoe will go, 'Hey she's British' and someone screams back, 'no she's South African!'... (dizzy look).

Anyway all I can say is that I LOOOOVE the sound of her voice! I'm hoping she'd do some kind of audio book because her voice is so soothing.

But for now the audio commentary of "Junebug" is as close to an Embeth Audio Book as I'll get :)

... which by the way you learn a lot from (from ANY audio commentary, actually)... she doesn't smoke, she doesn't like the heat, she bought a bike at Walmart for $70, she's considered/ing retiring from making movies because of her kids (which I REALLY hope she doesn't! She's a fantastically amazing actress!), she disagrees that Amy Adams looks like a meerkat... and more.

"They're all mistakes, children. Glad I never was one."

Sounds like drama school English. Australians like Cate Blanchett have similar accents.

"You don't scare me with your quiet dignity and your subtle cologne."

I do find it interesting when accents are reduced to yes or no questions. The range of accents within a geography, and the range of variables within speakers with the same general accent is large, and outside some isolated rural area, people are now used to these variations as within the norm. Which is just one reason I find criticism of actors' accents odd. (the main reason is that they are acting).

Cate Blanchett is an example of someone whose natural mode of speech can be subsumed by technique and I think she does very credible accents. Her flat American is decent enough, even her regional American accents (eg in "The Gift") are at least as good as most American actors from the civilized parts of the country trying to play redneck. She is an Australian who can sound English or American or a hundred other things through pure technical chops. Although like many other successful Australians she does have the advantage of having at least one non Australian parent which I think is helpful in eradicating the Aussie accent.

Embeth has diverse parentage and the additional effect of having grown up around the world. I don't really know what her normal accent is but i expect it would be a bit of a mashup of South African, English and American. So rather than hiding her one true accent in favour of another, I think she is usually just emphasizing different aspect of her own polyglot speech. Probably makes it easier to be ballpark, but harder to completely nail something.

Personally I find most South African accents to sound more like a cross between Dutch and Australian (or maybe even New Zealand - as heard in the long e or i vowel sounds) than an English accent, although the contingent of posh Anglo-South Africans who maintain an English accent does skew some of that perception.

Anyhow, Embeth is hotter than Cate.