MovieChat Forums > The Gift (2015) Discussion > Robyn's (Rebecca Hall's) British accent ...

Robyn's (Rebecca Hall's) British accent appearing/disappearing questions


In the movie I believe they say a couple times she is from Chicago.

She sounded American for most of the film, but there were several times when I stopped and said to myself, "Wait a second, she just spoke with a strong English accent." I even went back and listened again and there are a few lines where she definitely sounds English.

Researching her a bit, I see she was born in England and also went to college there. She does, however, hold dual British & U.S. citizenship, so she must have moved and/or lived in the states for some time, and perhaps lives in the U.S. now.

So my questions are: 1) For those of you that have seen her in other works, does she speak exclusively with an English accent, or not? And 2) Do you think her sounding American and then at times English in this film was due to her slipping out of what was supposed to be a strictly American voice - OR just normal and accepted by the film as someone who lived most of her life in England (although not mentioned in the movie), moved to the U.S. and so sometimes is naturally going to sound a bit English?

reply

Outside of this film, I've only seen her in:

- The Prestige (English)
- The Town (American)
- Iron Man 3 (American)

She slipped up more in this film than she had in The Town or IM3, but it wasn't bad.

** Rest in peace, Timothy Volkert (1988 - 2003) **

reply

Hey, thanks much for the info - good to know. Yeah, it wasn't too bad, I just noticed it a few times and it prompted me to see if she was English or not.

reply

She's from England. British actors do American accents all the time fir movies. You would surprised how many actors we think are American, but are actually British.

reply

It actually bothered me more that she had NO Chicago accent, just a generic American-ish accent. (A Chicago accent is quite noticable but this actress made no effort to sound even a little bit Midwestern - which would be easy.) It actually surprised me more that the actor who played Gordo is Australian. His Aussie accent never came through at all.

reply

I heard a couple of slip ups from Joel, though that might be because I'm Australian and it's easier for me to recognise a familiar accent.

reply

Even though I've only seen her work once before in a horror movie set in an English boarding school in the 1920's, The Awakening (2011), when I first caught glimpse of this movie on TV and recognized her, I immediately "heard" her put-on American accent, even though I'm neither British nor American.

Checked out the movie in full later on. I think her slip-ups were painfully obvious at times, especially when she was required to talk faster during an argument, like when the husband discovered her pills, or when her husband realized she was sneaking behind his back to dig up someone from his past.

However, I still like her, and I loved this movie. She sounded the most natural in The Awakening, so I think that's her actual accent.

reply