Toni's accent

I honestly think that actors from other countries than America are perfect with other accents. People from the UK mainly. Toni Collette's accent was perfect in this, The Hours and in Little Miss Sunshine. I just think it's easier for them or something. I have no idea.

"I don't like so much freedom down there. It makes me tingly in my giblets."

It could also be that most foreign actors and actresses are simply better than American ones. I mean, come on, Keanu Reeves and Kevin Costner doing accents is a joke.



Marge: He's had a heart-attack! Quick someone do CPR!
Homer: [singing] I see a bad moon rising.

I think you're right for the most part but I have seen performances by actors who have accents who work so hard at sounding "American" that they sound phony and affected as well. Two performances that immediately come to mind are Russell Crowe in CINDERELLA MAN and Jude Law in I HERAT HUCKABEES.

American actors are lousy at accents. There are very few who are capable of pulling off a foreign accent perfectly. Some actors dont even bother. The american actors who do the best accents are usually character and comic actors. Lead dramatic actors almost always suck. They over-emphasize their accents and make it sound fake. They should spend more time watching british comedies and serials.

Hollywood movies are standard entertainment in all non-communist countries and most movie lovers from other countries watch them with subtitles. Also english is a required language course in almost every high school around the world whereas in the U.S., we are arent encouraged to learn other languages. Now we're even discouraged from learning Spanish. So it's easier for foreigners to watch american movies and most use them as a tool to learn english and familiarize themselves with the many different kinds of american accents and dialects. I see asian immigrants renting american videos at the library everyday. Makes sense. Watching a movie that interests you and learning a language at the same time.

It's all about muscle memory. If you use certain muscles in your body, they become stronger, surpassing the strength of other muscles. It's the same for your mouth. You get used to stressing your tongue a certain way, to holding your face a certain way, making 'O's with a round mouth and 'E's with a wide grin. You get used to speaking a certain way, and it's hard to pick up foreign accents. In Japanese, the letters "R" and "L" are the same, so it's particularly hard for them to pick up English.

If you try to speak with a Brit accent, you'll notice that you hold your jaw lower and forward, while pulling the roof of your mouth upward. Think of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady with the mouthful of marbles.

Another factor is that European primary schools have more foreign language requirements. That would give your mouth quite a workout. Ugh all of this sounds like sexual innuendo, I'm done.

There was one bit in the film where Collette slips into an Australian accent, that I noticed. It's in that scene where she goes to talk to her dad about her grandmother sending her that plain ticket - just some words sound really Australian to me, but otherwise it's pretty much all good. Her American accent in Little Miss Sunshine is pretty much flawless, I thought.

Although I never really knew if it was just because I was not American myself that I was easily kidded into thinking the accents were good - but yeah, in "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind", Kate Winslet - like you said - and also Tom Wilkinson's American accents, despite being English, both sound really good.

Maybe it's just cos American media is everywhere - people in other countries get used to hearing American accents in the films they see and music they listen to...

I have a sneaky suspicion it has to do with the way American culture has spread throughout the western world. I'm Australian, and the number of American TV shows vastly out-numbers the Australian ones. It's not surprising, therefore, that many actors from Australia are able to replicate an American accent flawlessly. Having never travelled to America, I don't know how many Australian or British films or television series end up on your screens, but I'm assuming there aren't too many; I am, of course, basing this assumption on certain episodes of shows like the Simpsons, where the "Australian" accent is actually some sort of hybrid, crossing the accents of England, America and New Zealand.

"Who's gonna move Wayne?" - Richard Simmons

People in Australia (and pretty much everywhere else) grow up watching American tv, so the US accent is familiar to most of us. We can even pick various different US accents - Southern, New York, Italian-American etc simply from having watched so many US shows.

I could do an American accent even as a kid since I watched so much Seseme Street!