Worst Movie/TV Accents

[Sardondi]

I've been bleeding from the eyes again about horrendously ill-cast actors who can't perform a remotely correct dialect. Specifically, my complaint was against the character playing Arlo Givens in Justified. Raymond Barry plays him with a bizarre concoction of dialect which sounds like a Maine downeaster married to David O. Selznick's idea of a Georgia plantation owner. But his dialect comes nowhere within 1000 miles of someone whose roots in Appalachian Kentucky go back almost almost 300 years.

And it made me think: how do people with such horrendously wrong accents get hired? I suppose usually it's star-power that overcomes qualms about vocal accuracy. Or if a film if produced by the one with the horrible accent. After all, who's going to tell the boss his dialect makes people laugh? And he's playing Lear not Bottom. So who are the worst, most wrong or embarrassingly bad accents in the movies or on tv?

Well, let's lead off with Kevin Costner in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Obviously a case of everyone being too afraid to tell the boss he sucks, because IIRC Costner produced this didn't he? Costner's disastrous on-again off-again "English" accent is legendary. It would be hard to find one worse.

Then there's the movie where we get a two-fer, in which the two major stars both suck at their dialects: Highlander. Christopher Lambert's heavy French accent has dogged him ever since the days of Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. In Highlander what he intends as a Scots' brogue is entirely supplanted by his thick French. It's Maurice Chevalier in a kilt: "Zeer kin honly bih whan, hanh hanh hanh." But that's okay, because we've got a double helping of a real, totally eradicable brogue from Sean Connery, who plays Ramirez, the noble Spaniard, but sounds like MacDougal the manure collector. So wretched. It was such an embarrassment they had to write some foolishness to cover Connery's complete inability to sound like anything but the proud Scotsman he is.

Christopher Lambert must be key to this problem somehow, because he starred with yet another "actor" whose inability to come up with a proper accent ruined her role. Yes, it's Andie MacDowell, whose South Carolina whang so overcame her attempts at sounding like an English noblewoman in Greystoke that Glenn Close was secretly brought in as a stunt voice during redubbing and totally replaced all MacDowell's lines. Wow, that must have devastated a highly trained, uh, model like MacDowell.

Now, I love Robert Duvall. He's a national treasure. His Texas Ranger Gus McRae in the epic miniseries Lonesome Dove is so soaring and magisterial a performance that it is probably the definitive portrayal of the American frontier West. He followed it with two made-for-tv movies which, although essentially the same role, cemented that reputation as king of the cowboys: Open Range and Broken Trail. Before these he had won an Oscar for a country music star in Tender Mercies. His diction and language in each of these is just perfect. In each role he's got that "hard-r" Appalachian sound I'm always talking about which is vital for any character from that mountain chain, or whose family lived there before Duvall's character went West.

But Duvall should stay away from anything much different. He embarrassed himself once in the 70's The Seven Percent Solution, playing (God, forgive him) Dr. Watson in a Sherlock Holmes film. Ouch.

Who else?

[stevesh]

I don't know if it's available anywhere, but Robert Conrad's attempt at a French-Canadian accent in the TV movie of Michener's Centennial will make your ears bleed. You have been warned.

Oh, and here's what he said about it in an interview with sfgate.com:

Q:The part called for a French Canadian accent.
A: Very hard. But I had a speech specialist at my side all day long listening to every word I said, correcting me until I got it right. Each syllable had to be perfect.

The role was turned down by Robert Blake, Charles Bronson and James Caan. Not sure any of them could have done it well either.

[PhantasticSanShiSan]

Angelina Jolie in Alexander, or just about any movie where she needs a foreign sound.  She's horrid at it.

[Sardondi]

Angelina Jolie in Alexander, or just about any movie where she needs a foreign sound.  She's horrid at it.

As I recall she sounded vaguely Transylvanian.

[Eddie Coyle]

          I love to look at her...but Diane Lane's North Shore Boston accent in The Perfect Storm was maybe the worst "Boston accent" yet, and there's a ton of them...Affleck and Damon included.

        But then again, I'm a lifelong Bostonian who sounds like Colin Quinn.

[General Johnson Jameson]

I always liked the old westerns when they had mexicans trying to act the role of Indians.
Funny shit.

[coaster]

I always liked the old westerns when they had mexicans trying to act the role of Indians.
Funny shit.

Or white people playing Indians. Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson come to mind.

[Sardondi]

Or white people playing Indians. Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson come to mind.

...or Charles Bronson trying to sound human.

          I love to look at her...but Diane Lane's North Shore Boston accent in The Perfect Storm was maybe the worst "Boston accent" yet, and there's a ton of them...Affleck and Damon included.
        But then again, I'm a lifelong Bostonian who sounds like Colin Quinn.

You must know exactly the frustration about Boston accents that I do about Southern ones. You know the huge differences that locals can tell between a Southie and a resident of Beacon Hill. It probably drives you crazy to see some movie about Irish mobsters and hear a Whitey Bulger character come out with a sound like he's from the Back Bay. Dialect is culture, and it kills me that television and movies have almost destroyed regional distinctions. Another 100 years, or less, and we'll all sound alike. Dammit.

[Eddie Coyle]

...or Charles Bronson trying to sound human.
You must know exactly the frustration about Boston accents that I do about Southern ones. You know the huge differences that locals can tell between a Southie and a resident of Beacon Hill. It probably drives you crazy to see some movie about Irish mobsters and hear a Whitey Bulger character come out with a sound like he's from the Back Bay. Dialect is culture, and it kills me that television and movies have almost destroyed regional distinctions. Another 100 years, or less, and we'll all sound alike. Dammit.

Hell yes. And I completely concur about actors from the British Isles being more adept at "getting" a Southern accent than our thespians can. Kevin Spacey for my ears seems to be able to achieve it, but maybe because he spends more time in the UK than here.

          Funny you mention Whitey Bulger...his younger brother, the nearly as infamous former Senate president, Billy has a distinct lilt that if you didn't know better would have you presume he emigrated here from Galway. My uncles that are his contemporaries believe it's overcompensation for...get this...being named William. Not a lot of "Billys" where we're from. But I'm guilty of the lilt thing at times as well, an atavistic thing I guess. And from trying pick girls up with that voice...which sounds better than my usual whiskey/cigs/trach delivery.

[Sardondi]

       ...Billy has a distinct lilt that if you didn't know better would have you presume he emigrated here from Galway. My uncles that are his contemporaries believe it's overcompensation for...get this...being named William. Not a lot of "Billys" where we're from.

What, "William" being too "English" a name?

[Eddie Coyle]

What, "William" being too "English" a name?

        Only Oliver was more verboten.

        With the post-busing white flight/recent gentrification, a lot of that "West Belfast" mentality has receded. But the South Boston I grew up in had nearly as many Republican murals as Falls Road. There's a few left. This one below is fittingly attached to...Al's Liquors

[MV/Liberace!]

ANY accent tom hanks attempts.  just awful.

[ziznak]

two words:
KEVIN COSTNER

[FightTheFuture]

Without question, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

[Sardondi]

Without question, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

Ah, the famous "my blood says this woman is for me!" movie. Can you imagine how pissed John Wayne must have been to have been forced to play a Mongol warrior? Probably one of the major reasons The Duke left the studio system to start his own production company.

[Eddie Coyle]

 
          Great actor overall. But Rod Steiger's Mexican peasant/bandito in "Duck You Sucker"(Fist Full of Dynamite) is practically comedic.

[FightTheFuture]

Ah, the famous "my blood says this woman is for me!" movie. Can you imagine how pissed John Wayne must have been to have been forced to play a Mongol warrior? Probably one of the major reasons The Duke left the studio system to start his own production company.

Yes, a Howard Hughes production. The Duke and Hughes were good friends at the time and Wayne probably wanted to help his pal as much as possible, which I think may have been the rationale for Duke taking on that role.


Interestingly, the film was produced in Utah, which I understand was very near the Nevada site that did extensive above ground nuclear testing just several years prior.  As I recall, there was a good deal of speculation regarding that site acting as the catalyst for Wayne`s eventual run-in with cancer. Although, I would imagine his proclivity for hard liquor, non-filtered cigarettes and red meat probably played a fairly significant role, as well.   

[coaster]

ANY accent tom hanks attempts.  just awful.

He sounded like a stroke victim in The Terminal.

[onan]

Keanu Reeves comes to mind.

[Sardondi]

.Although, I would imagine his proclivity for hard liquor, non-filtered cigarettes and red meat probably played a fairly significant role, as well.

It's just a shame he didn't eat enough red meat to save himself from smoking all those Camels.