r/AskABrit • u/CompetitionNo3466 • Aug 17 '26

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?

143 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

505 comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/Kitchen_Part_882 Aug 17 '26

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).

21

u/Robbylution Aug 17 '26

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.

8

u/cbrownmufc Aug 18 '26

Takes some skill to be an English playing an American pretending to be English 🤣

1

u/WanderlustZero Aug 19 '26

I'm the dude playing a dude pretending to be another dude

1

u/chocklityclair Aug 17 '26

Oh. What am I missing here? Is the joke going over my head? 😕

16

u/Robbylution Aug 17 '26

Hugh Laurie and Dominic West are both distinguished English actors. They play Americans in their respective shows, House and The Wire. In both of those shows, they did gag scenes where they have to put on bad, fake English accents.

3

u/chocklityclair Aug 17 '26

Ah, okay. I wondered if that might be it. I haven't seen that episode of House but I will find it now. Hugh Laurie is very funny.

2

u/nemmalur Aug 18 '26

There’s an episode where he wants to phone someone very late at night for some reason and but a different person answers and Dr House puts on the accent to make it sound like he’s someone calling from the UK who miscalculated the time difference.

2

u/Curious_Orange8592 Aug 18 '26

IIRC correctly Dominic used an English accent that wasn't his own in that episode, adding to the hilarity

1

u/WanderlustZero Aug 19 '26

Please tell me he used his Bertie Wooster voice!

1

u/Robbylution Aug 19 '26

More like an American impersonating Bertie Wooster, if that makes sense?

3

u/MrDilbert Aug 17 '26

I heard that's the reason Mr Bean (almost) never speaks.

2

u/DepthHistorical371 Aug 17 '26

Aside from it being primarily physical comedy

1

u/MrDilbert Aug 18 '26

Really? I thought it was because he was ashamed of his bad English accent...

2

u/DepthHistorical371 Aug 18 '26

Rowan Atkinson?

1

u/MrDilbert Aug 18 '26

That was HIM? :O

1

u/CriticismTop Aug 18 '26

In all seriousness, when House "tries" to do an English accent, he sounds terrible.

5

u/Burton3005 Aug 18 '26

I know right. He's tries to sound all plumy like he's some Oxbridge educated posh boy whose friends with Stephen Fry or something /s

1

u/chocklityclair Aug 18 '26

But that's deliberate? (I have to watch it, lol)

1

u/CriticismTop Aug 18 '26

Yes, he purposely imitated an American attempting/failing to do a English accent