NAH then. Proud Sheffield native and Blades fan Sean Bean here. Sometimes acting means doing a non-Yorkshire accent. I can do these five in my fucking sleep:
Yorkshire
Alright, I know what I said, but not just South Yorks. I can do Middlesbrough, Leeds, Hull and even a solid stab at Harrogate. For longer roles I stick to Sheffield but remember not to add ‘duck’ to the end of sentences. Must have said that 50 times in one Game of Thrones scene. That’s why they chopped me fucking head off. Wasn’t in the script.
All-purpose American
I’ve done shitloads of Yank films. Equilibrium, Silent Hill, The Island, all the ones you see on 5USA and ITV4. I don’t buy into this idea that the US has loads of different accents. Why would they? So just do the main one, throw in words like ‘sidewalk’, ‘sneakers’, ‘eggplant’ and ‘fanny pack’, and if you’re floundering slap your knee and shout ‘yeee-hah!’ Requires reshoots? Yes. Director gets a mard-on? Yes. I still get paid at end of week so fuck it.
Robot
Haven’t played a robot yet but it’s coming. I can feel it when I piss. Anyway I’ve been practicing, because it’s not just adding ‘bleep’ and ‘bloop’ and saying ‘I could fucking murder a pint of oil’. You also have to do the arms and shout ‘mal-func-tion….mal-func-tion’ before powering down as if you’ve run out of batteries. Four decades of acting experience here. Invaluable.
Baddie
Done a ton of these bastards and it’s a breeze. There’s posh and there’s Russian and there’s combinations of the two. Speak slowly, as if the script wasn’t bollocks, and any old shit sounds convincing. I did that Bond with Pierce Brosnan and to this day I don’t know what the fuck it was about. Ping pong possibly.
Orc
Before this new, fancy TV version, I was in Lord of the Rings. They killed me off, the wankers. Shot me full of arrows. Anyway, I was pissed off with the whole affair because first New Zealand’s like Yorkshire but not irreparably scarred by coal mining and steel production and it’s a fucking shame. Second, I actually wanted to be an Orc. I’d spent months doing the voice in the bath. But no, I had to play soppy bollocks Boromir instead. It’s a tragedy. I’d have pissed it as Orc Lieutenant 1.
