probably the same thing that happened to Anthony La Paglia's
Live in any new place and eventually the local accent (or the one you are deliberately using for work) will take some sort of hold.
Interestingly it'll never be complete (or rarely so) it's interesting to hear (for example) a friend's father who has lived in Aus about 35 years, but born and raised somewhere in the southern US. His accent (to us) still sounds more American, but to his relatives who came to visit, it sounded more Australian. Perhaps most interesting of all, he still used a lot of the phrases and expressions from his country of origin, but pronounced in his current blend of accents.
I think with actors and accents, one of the better ideas I heard of was on the directors commentary of 'the jackal' where he discussed Richard Gere and an irish accent. Where possible, there are a range of accents that fall within the spectrum of an irish accent (even to an aussie, it's easy to pick someone from Dublin, vs someone from, say, Belfast) - anyway what he did was to find the 'particular' irish accent that Gere was more in sync with an able to do better.
Obviously for some films, an actor needs a specific regional accent, I dunno, Boston, New York, whatever, and its just what they need to work toward, but in other cases, perhaps finding the accent they can do more plausibly would be better than a poorly performed American accent from a different part of the US.
I don't know of many actors that can do an Australian accent well who aren't born here (or perhaps some New Zealanders - and on that tangent - not everyone outside of the South Pacific would instantly pick those two accents from one another, but to the locals they are about as different as can be. Perhaps with the popularity of stuff like flight of the conchords this would no longer be the case). One of the actors who was given some credit was an actor who had a semi regular spot on 'JAG' playing an Australian but who was actually born and raised in the UK. I can only comment that whilst it was (esp for tv entertainment purposes) certainly not that bad, it was obvious to most people I know (of those who ever actually watched the show) that the accent was off. Not everyone twigged that it was a British actor, some thought it might just have been a result of living overseas for long enough for some of his accent to change.
Worst accent in recent years? Ray Winstone in 'the departed' - if only they had introduced his character as something like 'irish underworld, raised in london's east end' or something like that, and let him use his own accent (not that that would be perfectly accurate to the backstory, but good enough, and certainly better than the accent he used in the film)
[I never seem to be able to get a post to be displayed in teh right place in a thread, apologies in advance if this has happened]
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