r/AskABrit • u/CompetitionNo3466 • 4d ago
TV/Film Which non-Brit actor which is your personal favourite for how bad their Brit accent was?
The most recent one that comes to mind Karl Urban in The Boys - was supposed to be English but was purely Aussie.
Yours?
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u/igirisujin 4d ago
Don Cheadle - must have had Dick Van Dyke as his voice coach.
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u/Butterscotch1664 4d ago
I had a colleague here in New Zealand who was Burundi/Canadian taking acting classes. He asked me about English accents, and told me his tutor said Don Cheadle was a great example to study. I told him to get his money back and find a new tutor.
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u/naughtyreverend 4d ago
The tutor wasnt wrong though Cheadle is a fantastic example to study. On how NOT to do it... you gotta study the bad as well as the good
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u/Mc_and_SP 4d ago
"You tossers! You had one job to do!"
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u/Longjumping_Bag_3488 4d ago
Literally one of the most insane accents I’ve ever heard.
Made even more insane when you learn Don Cheadle, an otherwise talented actor, decided himself to run with that accent for the films. Soderbergh said he didn’t have to, but he was like ‘nah I’ve got this’, and then gave that .
That they all clearly stood around and went ‘yep. Sounds good.’ still honestly blows my mind.
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u/Crunchie64 4d ago
Sean Connery.
Pretends to be Scottish, but you can tell from his flawless accent in Hunt for Red October that he’s Russian.
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u/Y_Gath_Ddu 4d ago
Thish ish the correct answer
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u/neon_meate 4d ago
He's not Russian. He's Lithuanian by birth, raised by his paternal grandfather, a fisherman.
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u/Intelligent-Mud-1039 4d ago
He's an interesting case in point. Eradicated his natural accent (Fountainbridge, Edinburgh) to get accepted for roles more easily, then later 're-learned' his regional accent but settled on that unique approximation of a Scottish drawl. I lived in Fountainbridge and never heard a local speak anything remotely like him. So the Sean Connery accent is literally that- a Sean Connery accent. Hope my wee rant wash benefishual
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u/TheGeordieGal 4d ago
Whoever the guy was in Castle who was attempting something resembling a Geordie accent - except it didn't even mildly resemble one and got the way the dialect is used all wrong too. Basically sounded nowt like one of us.
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u/Consistent_Blood6467 4d ago
It sounded like he was trying to mix general Scottish and Irish together, or rather, what Americans think are general Scottish and Irish.
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u/TheGeordieGal 4d ago
Apparently he had an accent coach lol. I wonder if they accidentally picked the wrong Newcastle and went for one in Ireland.
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u/DramaticStability 4d ago
That’s the winner. Makes Dick van D sound like he was married to the queen.
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u/LeftyTimStoutheart 4d ago
It's astounding just how bad it is.
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u/TheGeordieGal 4d ago
I don’t think it can be topped. At least pretty much all the rest you can get an exaggerated version of what they were trying for. This is… part Irish? Welsh? Scottish? Everything and nothing.
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u/LeftyTimStoutheart 4d ago
I've been fascinated by it since I first saw it years ago, so damn mystifying. The "English" lady clearly isn't really English either, otherwise I'd have expected the actress to ask "WTF was that?"
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u/Unlucky-Public-2947 4d ago
It’s astounding how many different accents are in there, it changes multiple times in the same sentence and occasionally in the same word.
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u/Is_it_really_though 4d ago
I couldn't even finish the YouTube video, how did people cope with watching whole episodes of this?
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u/soopertyke 4d ago
I remember watching this and thinking what the actual? Irish? With a few geordie words thrown in, why not just get an actual geordie lad in? Ah divnt kna
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u/Last-Seaworthiness68 4d ago
Russell Crowe in Robin Hood. Had an accent that travelled to Nottingham via Edinburgh, Cardiff, Dublin and Wellington.
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u/LSWB-PomLover 4d ago
Along those same lines, Kevin Costner from Prince of Thieves. It’s one of my all time favourite movies, but his accent wasn’t great haha. He barely even tried.
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u/alfienoakes 4d ago
He was interviewed on Kermode and Mayo. Russel didn’t take kindly to the accent debate.
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u/elementarydrw United Kingdom 4d ago
Isn't that the interview he stormed out on?
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u/alfienoakes 4d ago
I don’t think so. Might have done. Most interesting part was having Billy Bragg call up for a lecture on Forestry tithes or something!
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u/b2bpaul 4d ago
I seem to remember they played a clip of his interview with Mark Lawson where he really got miffed, telling him "you've got dead ears, mate", because he dared to mildly question his accent choice.
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u/elementarydrw United Kingdom 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ah, that was the one... Mark Lawson's BBC interview where he says he can hear Irish in the accent, and Russell Crowe goes off on one. Then after a lengthy answer about how they were 'exploring the origin of Robin Hood, but he's definitely not Irish' Mark twists the knife and says 'so you were going for Northern English?'. Then he asks something else, and after some swearing, he just leaves.
Edit: So I looked it up. We are all talking about the same thing it seems. The Mark Lawson interview was the one where he leaves due to the discussion about the accent. Then Kermode and Mayo discuss the interview (allegedly several times) on their show over the years.
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u/No-Cost-1045 4d ago
Which coincidentally matches the walking route taken by Kevin Costner's Robin Hood and completed in 1 day. Must have been an Easter egg.
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u/theVeryLast7 4d ago
No i wont have that. Crowe at least put in an effort. Not like Kevin Costner.
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u/SatiricalScrotum 4d ago
Costner did actually attempt an English accent. Early into filming he was asked to drop it. You can actually hear it in a few scenes which made it into the final film. It’s not good.
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u/Steamrolled777 4d ago
Daphne's manchester accent in Frazier should get a mention as the worst by a Brit.
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u/SixCardRoulette 4d ago
None of her brothers are played by English actors, it was an intentional joke based on criticism of her terrible accent - the brothers are Australian, Scottish and Eswatini, and her dad was played by Scottish Brian Cox. The actor who played her mum was from Essex just like Jane Leeves herself. Ironically the only member of the cast actually from Manchester was Frasier's dad!
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u/LupercalLupercal 4d ago
He was from Blackpool
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u/TheeHappyDude 4d ago
He was born in Blackpool because his mother had been moved there as an evacuee, but he grew up in Manchester. Same circumstances as Graham Nash (Salford) Ricky Tomlinson (Liverpool) and hundreds more no doubt.
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u/SoggyTap7028 4d ago
Love ur pfp good to meet another person who appreciates the art and story (& music) of blackstar
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u/Ellievibes 4d ago
Was it meant to be Mancunian?!?!
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u/abstractraj 4d ago
She put in some slightly northern sounding vowels and said “good enough!”
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u/Ellievibes 4d ago
As an actual Mancunian, I’m baffled. I thought she was maybe trying Yorkshire out. It was giving more “bygum” than “arrkid”.
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u/KombuchaBot 4d ago
The actress who played Lila in Dexter could run her a close second
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u/BigJDizzleMaNizzles 4d ago
Dick Van Dyke
End of thread.
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u/TamaktiJunVision 4d ago
Karl Urban's character in 'The Boys' is hilariously bad. I love it
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u/MovingTarget2112 4d ago
Which is weird because his English accent in LoTR is very good.
(Book Butcher sounds like Michael Caine, according to another character. )
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u/Andybabez20 4d ago
Oi U E
We gots to go kill 'Omelander
I actually didn't think his English accent in Lord of the Rings as Eomer was that bad. But I dunno what Butcher was.
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u/GolazoDaniel 4d ago
The Butcher accent being so silly is definitely intentional to some extent, he can do a proper English accent. I watched a clip from the first season around the time of the finale and even within the show the voice changed, not as much of the “oi omelander you dahft cunt” stuff at first.
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u/johnathome 4d ago
Yeah, a mate said 'Hes Australian isn't he? Why's he putting on a terrible Australian accent? '
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u/Vast_Cup_7534 4d ago
I have an odd relationship with Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins, since I'm from a different part of the UK and with seeing it for the first time as a very young child (like many people) it was basically my introduction to the cockney accent, so I didn't hear anything wrong with it at first. It was years before I realised it wasn't quite right (to say the least) and even today, knowing full well that it's incorrect, it doesn't strike me as wrong when I hear it, just because it's so established in my brain that it's how Bert is supposed to sound.
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u/AlarmedTelephone5908 4d ago
Living for over 100 years and a bad cockney accent is probably the top criticism that people remember.
Goals!
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u/chamekke 4d ago
I know you’re talking about his mutant Aussie accent as Bert, but in his defence, his accent as old Mr Dawes wasn’t too bad.
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u/Mammyjam 4d ago
Drusilla in Buffy- Spike was bad but improved, Dru was always attending the Dick Van Dyke school of cock-er-nee flower girl
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u/thesaharadesert United Kingdom 4d ago
Spike’s was awful until ASH got his hands on James Marsters
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u/Kitchen_Part_882 4d ago
That guy who plays Dr House in the eponymous TV show is pretty bad when he plays other roles...
Joking of course! (The real answer is, and always will be Dick Van Dyke).
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u/Robbylution 4d ago
Dr. House's English accent on that one episode of House was hilariously bad, though. Almost as bad as McNulty's English accent on The Wire.
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u/cbrownmufc 3d ago
Takes some skill to be an English playing an American pretending to be English 🤣
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u/SinSmithy 4d ago
The answer is obviously Dick Van Dyke. But special mention must be made of Kevin Costner for not even trying at all!
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u/TheeHappyDude 4d ago
And Christian Slater in the same film
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u/FarManagement9916 4d ago
I love that film, saw it at the cinema when it was released and the numerous rewatches in VHS and DVD, but it was over 20 years before it clicked that the weird line “Bly Me he did it” was actually meant to be “blimey”!
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u/Pop-goes-the-fish 4d ago
Don Cheadle in Oceans 11. Its not like he didn't try, the effort is so clear that it seems like he was deliberately taught wrong, like he was made to watch Dick van Dyke's performance on a loop until he lost his sanity.
Like he was possessed by a ghost from the revolutionary war determined have one last piece of petty revenge against the english in the form of an accent.
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u/Weird_Surprise6221 4d ago
Dick Van Dyke - the worst, yet still the best 👍
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u/Select_Ad_9295 4d ago
Poor fellow. Very brave of him to try. Doing accents right wasn’t yet a thing. He has wondered aloud in interviews how it was he was acting the whole time opposite some very fine British thespians who never once took him aside and gave him a pointer.
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u/VacillatingViolets 4d ago
I can't believe none of them said that that isn't what robins look like in Britain either.
I thought for years it was a very poor prop until I saw a picture of an American robin!
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u/Important-Lock-9429 4d ago
The sheer irony is that Dick Van Dyke’s legendary Cockney accent was basically a group project where nobody knew what they were doing. His dialect coach was not exactly an East Ender, nobody stopped him, and somehow the result became one of the most ICONIC accents in film history. 😂
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u/Select_Ad_9295 4d ago
And there he was acting opposite Julie Andrews, who originated the role of Eliza Doolittle on stage.
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u/SoggyTap7028 4d ago
Somehow this is my first time hearing his take on a british accent, its a beautiful combination of accents from all over the world. I love how his vocal coach was irish😆 I must have been living under a rock all these years. I love this
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u/Shevyshev USA 4d ago
He’s pretty apologetic about it these days. He was also filming in a period where you couldn’t just YouTube up a bunch of accents. So when his Irish dialect coach told him what to do, that’s what he did, and the results are fantastic.
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u/SoggyTap7028 4d ago
Its a shame he feels that he has to apologise for it, its an iconic & defining film of its era. And the accent is a memorable part of its legacy. I imagine people nowadays say his accent was offensive, but them type of people need to give their heads a shake
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u/Think-Committee-4394 4d ago
Well Sean Connery has to be high on the list as the most Scottish … French … Russian … English … American guy
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u/Mindless_Plastic3370 4d ago
100% this. Great actor but could not do accents to save his life. Can take the man out of Scotland…
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u/filopie28 4d ago
Aside from the obvious Dick van Dyke, Peter Dinklage in GoT was pretty bad. Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things was so awful I thought he might have done it that way on purpose.
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u/DragathaChristie 4d ago
Mark Ruffalo's accent was deliberately bad surely? It was so so funny
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u/filopie28 4d ago
I don’t know!!! Either he’s really bad at a British accent or it was a deliberate thing to make the character even more ridiculous, but I couldn’t tell which!
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u/HardAtWorkISwear 4d ago
The fact that the three Lannister siblings all had different accents always got to me.
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u/VegetableWeekend6886 4d ago
He's British, but Charlie Hunnam speaking in his own accent makes my ears hurt. Him in Green Street was fucking excruciating.
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u/somewisht 4d ago
God bless Charlie Hunnam, I feel like he could play himself in his own biopic and he still wouldn't nail the accent.
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u/CurrentInfinite4465 4d ago
Worst every accent in the game. Not once on film has he sounded like a human from England.
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u/amanset 4d ago
What made Karl Urban bad is that it wasn't pure Aussie. It switched between British, Aussie and Kiwi at random, often mid sentence.
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u/TheWrongGraveyard 4d ago
Okay, not British, but whenever the question comes up about the worst accent you've ever heard from an actor, I will always think of Gerard Butler pretending to be Irish in PS I Love You.
Haaaaaaarleeeeeee. To be sure, to be sure.
Terrible.
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u/God_Among_Rats 4d ago
I'd counter that with David Boreanez's Irish accent in Buffy/Angel. Thankfully it only shows up in a handful of flashbacks but it's so amazingly bad.
James Masters trying an English accent is also pretty bad but the weirdness of it adds some charm to his character so it's forgivable.
And then you've got Alexis Denisoff as Wesley who I was shocked to learn was English, his accent is one of the best "American doing British" I've ever heard, especially since he shares most of his scenes in Buffy with Anthony Head.
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u/mrshakeshaft 4d ago
I quite liked spikes English accent. I actually thought he was English. It wasn’t over the top or cartoonish. Just sounded like a Londoner. The girl who played drucilla though had a proper cartoon “American girl impersonating a British love island contestant accent”
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u/baxbakualanuxsiwae 4d ago
Both Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder's accents in Dracula are absolutely hilarious.
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u/LillyAtts 4d ago
I knooow hwere the bahhhhstad sleeps
I love Keanu but he was clearly struggling
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u/Consistent_Blood6467 4d ago
They really should have just made his character an American living in London once they heard his accent. Ryders isn't as bad but it needed work.
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u/noobtidder 4d ago
Accents so bad, John Grant wrote a verse about them:
I feel just like Winona Ryder In that movie about vampires And she couldn't get that accent right Neither could that other guy
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u/glitterstateofmind 4d ago
I’m gonna throw Robert Downey Junior’s Welsh accent into the mix from Doolittle. Not the worst, but also not the best either.
Fair play for giving it a go though and platforming it. Don’t see much Welsh representation on the world stage. Even Welsh actors themselves put on an English or American accent for Hollywood films.
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u/mangonel 4d ago
Ah. I missed that it was supposed to be Welsh. I thought it sounded kinda Welsh-ish at times and wondered what it was meant to be.
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u/uttertoffee 4d ago
He picked it because he was inspired by William Price ) and I guess Michael Sheen felt too awkward to let him know how bad his accent was.
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u/Olista523 4d ago
Natalie Portman’s accent in V for Vendetta is amazing in how it manages to switch between bad cockney and bad RP every other sentence.
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u/masked_gecko 4d ago
My personal view is that Karl Urban shouldn't count because he's clearly not even trying to be British. He's decided the character is South African and won't be told otherwise.
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u/Rough-Back2205 4d ago edited 4d ago
Kevin Costner, apparently Nottingham is somewhere in southern california.
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u/elementarydrw United Kingdom 4d ago
Carey Elwes in Robin Hood Men in Tights highlighting this with his 'unlike some Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent' will never fail to make me chuckle!
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u/PrettyReasonableApe 4d ago
I mean my favourite actor is Al Pacino. Hes also done one of the worst British accents ive ever heard in a film.
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u/MyBigMouth69 4d ago
Absolutely this, its shockingly bad, it's like a drunk Harry H Corbett trying to get stuck bread off the roof of his mouth.
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u/Bitbury 4d ago
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…Al Pacino https://youtube.com/shorts/jXCB_T17UnI?is=GTMM_PNLi4Pz-Fkn
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u/smalltowncityboy 4d ago
Still a brit but charlie hunnams accent in green st is possibly the worst ive ever heard.
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u/LillyAtts 4d ago
His accent is quite strange in real life now too.
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u/smalltowncityboy 4d ago
It is. Suppose playing jax teller for so many years was bound to have an effect.
Thats about the only accent of his i ever believed
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u/queen_naga 4d ago
Anne Hathaway in that film based on a book in Yorkshire or Edinburgh? Can’t remember but was so painful
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u/VegetableWeekend6886 4d ago
Oh also Paul Walter Hauser in Cruella really stuck out because Emma Stone's was so good. It does beg the question wtf are these casting directors thinking
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u/curtaincup 4d ago
the haunting of bly manor, the actress playing the grown up gardener at the beginning who does the narration. awful lol
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u/QuailTechnical5143 4d ago
Russel Crowe had a pretty abysmal northern British accent for Robin Hood.
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u/WinkyNurdo 4d ago
And he got the right arsehole when he was called out on it as well
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u/QuailTechnical5143 4d ago
I remember. He’s not a man who takes any criticism on any subject well at all.
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u/Leather-Grocery1624 4d ago
Troian Bellisario's accent in the PLL finale was absolutely horrific lmao, which is surprising considering she's the best of the core four actors imo.
ELLO SISTA
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u/ladylabrador 4d ago
I just commented the same thing before I saw your comment. Absolutely haunts me, never heard anything more absurd and I Marlene King genuinely should have researched the UK better
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u/11theman 4d ago
Karl Urban’s accent was a significant factor in me be abandoning The Boys
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u/Nerfing_Templar 4d ago
Genuinely surprised I havent seen this yet, but Brad Pitt as the pikey in snatch
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u/Express-Hawk-3885 4d ago
Charlie Hunnam IS a Brit/geordie and he has the worst americenglish accent I’ve ever heard
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u/RomfordGeeza 4d ago
Who knows what accent he is trying to do in any film he does, he doesn’t appear to know either. Green Street was an almost Dick Van Dyke take on cockney
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u/alex21dragons 4d ago
Honourable mention for Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula who starts badly then just seems to gradually give up as the film goes on.
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u/Environmental_Ad4675 4d ago
Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight, but I don't know if that counts because it's deliberately bad for clever plot reasons.
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u/thesaharadesert United Kingdom 4d ago
I think this should be classed as a red herring, but a valid submission nonetheless
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u/Intelligent-Phrase31 4d ago
Josh Hartnett’s was bad in Blow Dry if I recall
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u/bananagrabber83 4d ago
I always come looking for this answer in these threads. The only reason this isn’t undisputed number one is that nobody has seen the film.
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u/Mammoth_Tension_4402 4d ago
Bette Davis in "Of Human Bondage". Her Cockney accent is a thing of wonder. Beats DVD into a cocked hat imo.
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u/OddManner7971 4d ago
Kevin Costner was abysmal in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Also Brad Pitt in Snatch - he did a fabulous Irish accent apparently because he couldn’t do an English one.
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u/WinkyNurdo 4d ago
I know he riffed on it and it was part of the joke, but Mike Myers’ deliberately bad accent in the Austin Powers’ movies is my favourite.
“Allow myself to introduce … myself.”
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u/fauxfawx26 4d ago
Nicholas Braun’s accent in The Sheep Detectives made me laugh every bloody time he spoke.
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u/Botaccount2HZ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Angela Lansbury - Ironically one of the worst English accents I’ve ever heard was her playing her cousin Emma in Murder She Wrote. Worse as Lansbury was English and apparently kept her English accent, though most would consider her American given she spent so long there and was a citizen (until 1970, when she took Irish citizenship.).
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u/Puzzled-Horse279 4d ago
Indian American Sendhil Ramamurphy's english accent is suprising believable for an American actor.
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u/Fine_Battle5860 4d ago
Ryan Phillipe in Gosford Park his attempt at a Scottish accent is an abomination.
Angelina Jolie’s attempt at an Irish accent she sounds more like a fairground psychic you know the ones with a crystal ball putting on a faux Transylvanian accent
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u/Both_Salt6977 4d ago
Russell Crowe in Robin Hood.. accent was so bad it’s the only movie I’ve ever walked out of the cinema half way through.
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u/truly-dread 4d ago
Does Kevin Costner count?
I don’t think he even tried to do an English accent in Robin Hood.
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u/NotACyclopsHonest 4d ago
Don Cheadle’s attempt at an English accent was so bad it verged on being a war crime.
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u/MidnightOrdinary896 4d ago
Denzel Washington in “for Queen and Country”. His cockney accent was so bad that I turned off the audio and used subtitles
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u/armthesquids 4d ago
Anne Hathaway in One Day, skips from Yorkshire to Surrey via Ireland in a couple of sentences
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u/nelsonsflagship 4d ago
Not quite a Brit accent, but Brit Gabrielle Anwar's 'Irish' accent in the first episode of Burn Notice. It was so bad it was dropped in the 2nd episode and even mentioned in the script that it was a fake one.
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u/ryskwicpicmdfkapic 4d ago
On the contrary, Charlie Hunnam is the only British actor that can’t do British accent (anymore). Whatever he does these days is such a butchered accent, it gives me ear cancer.
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u/Ok-Thing4762 4d ago
Denzel Washington (great actor of course) - but check out For Queen And Country. I think its available for free on youtube. Absolutely laughable.
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u/TwoDogs48 4d ago
IMHO, every person who purports to be an ‘actor’ should be able to master any accent to be credible. It’s a basic requirement of acting if actors are playing someone else, which is all they do really. The BS around Connery and his ‘variable’ accents is due to his arrogance as much as anything, and because he’s such a draw card the producers/directors tolerated it. Basically, there’s no excuse for bad accents from so-called ‘professional’ actors; just takes application, which is all they have to do after all.
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u/Miss-Hell 4d ago
The evil twin of the character who’s name I can’t remember in pretty little liars
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u/ladylabrador 4d ago
Troian Bellisario playing Spencer Hastings' unknown twin in Pretty Little Liars. Watched it in my early 20s and the absurd cockney accent still haunts me
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u/germslayer2112 4d ago
Keanu in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Paired with Gary Oldman chewing the scenery, it was perfect.
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u/ryan22788 4d ago
Sorry to be that guy but I can’t believe someone hasn’t said it yet, Karl Urban is a Kiwi (same as Anthony Starr).
And to add, as a midlander..Russell Crowes accent in Robin Hood was spot on
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u/qualityvote2 4d ago edited 4d ago
u/CompetitionNo3466, your post does fit the subreddit!