WATCHING a film and thinking ‘hang on, what the f**k is that accent supposed to be?’ Nobody has ever spoken like these people:
Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991
Americans are famously terrible at any accents that aren’t their own, but our Kev, after two celebrated all-American roles, evidently decided not even to try. Appallingly lazy and embarrassing to Nottingham and England as a whole, this should have destroyed the Special Relationship forever.
Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October, 1990
If you’re working with Sean Connery you know that he’s not going to do anything but a Scottish accent. If he’s Scottish for Bond he’s Scottish for everthing. So allowing him to speak Russian with an Edinburgh drawl with no nod towards accurate pronunciation is all the more f**king baffling.
Ray Winstone in The Departed, 2006
It’s not all Americans. Cockney geezer Ray Winstone decided to stretch himself by playing a Boston gang member for Scorcese, despite having no business being in Boston unless it’s meant to be some weird exchange programme the American city has with Romford.
Leonardo Dicaprio in Blood Diamond, 2006
It’s impressive that a dark drama set in Africa with warlords and machetes could be derailed into a comedy by one man’s accent, but Leo manages it with his memorably awful Dutch-Kiwi-American interpretation of an Afrikaans twang. Dies at the end, presumably of toxic shock syndrome from allowing this alien thing into his body.
Tom Cruise in Far and Away, 1992
Americans love Ireland. It’s like Britain’s cute little brother who drinks too much. Americans are also incapable, on a genetic level, of doing the f**king accent. Tom Cruise cocks it right up. It’s as obviously fake as his marriage.
Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice, 1967
He’s back. Not for being Scottish while English, but for being Scottish while being James Bond disguised as a Japanese man. In this universe the Japanese are utterly sold on this slurring Scot speaking rudimentary phrases as just one more Tokyo salaryman.
