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James makes the Accent List!
Why are today's young actors so good at doing accents? Well, it's certainly not from having listened to Sean Connery |
 The Killers' CD, Hot Fuss, since its release last June, is doing wonderfully in the UK, much less well in the US. No surprise. Lots of Britpop doesn't travel well. Except, of course, that the band is American. There is something rather touching about four cool-looking kids, living in Las Vegas, yearning for the echt experience of a bedsit in Bradford. Given that they had to apply for passports to plug Hot Fuss in the UK, it's astonishing how pitch perfect the Killers' English accents are. It's also a sign of the times.
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Melinda and Melinda, Woody Allen's latest, is the usual Manhattan fluff storm, but has standout performances by Jonny Lee Miller (utter shit) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Mr Nice). Most audiences will assume, reasonably, given what their ears tell them, that the actors are American. In fact, Miller is grammar-school Surrey and Ejiofor is "sarf London". You'd never guess.
It used to be thought that by now we would all be speaking and listening to mid-Atlantic: the vocal equivalent of khaki. In fact, entertainers have become versatile mimics of accents they weren't born with. It's part of the modern toolkit to switch voice - no bigger deal than Colin Farrell going blond for Alexander the Great.
Accent virtuosity remains, however, a sadly disregarded skill. There's an Oscar for best foreign film but none for best foreign accent: a Grammy for best overseas band, but none for best (wannabe) overseas band.
It's only recently, of course, that accent management has improved to the degree that one would think of awarding prizes, as opposed to sticking your fingers in your ears. Hear Laurence Olivier doing Cantor Rabinovich in The Jazz Singer and you'll swear his voice coach was Josef Goebbels. Like other venerable expatriates (Michael Caine, notably), Sean Connery is a hopeless case. The writers have to create back stories (as in The Rock) to explain why he will always sound like the Scottish milkman he once was. As well teach a seal to bark Shakespeare as Connery to sound genuinely American.
There are various explanations for the recent quantum leap in accent virtuosity. British and American kids now grow up listening 24/7 to each other's music. It sinks in. Johnny Depp patterned his pronunciation in Pirates of the Caribbean on Keith Richards (offstage, that is. The Stones based their singing voices on Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters). Brad Pitt's Pikey garble in Snatch surely owes something to Father Jack Hackett.
Voice coaches have, in recent years, changed their teaching method. The old "rain in Spain - by George she's got it!" drills, advocated by the grande dame of the profession, Edith Skinner, have given way to more dynamic, whole-body techniques. Not that the public would notice. There are no prizes for voice coaches either. Everyone admires Zellweger's Bridget Jones performance, but who trained her? Barbara Berkery. The name, if credited at all, is usually down there with the clapperboard guy and the gofer who fetches the clapperboard guy's coffee. To my ear, Zellweger's Sloane is less perfect than Paltrow's snooty home counties in Emma (Berkery again).
My Oscar for best "not my own voice" performer would go to Ewan McGregor. He does crisp Cary Grant-American in Down with Love, barrack-room American in Black Hawk Down, an ultra-English Alec Guinness knock-off in Star Wars, street Scots in Trainspotting, and varsity Scots, in Shallow Grave. The last, I think, is his own voice.
Who are the 10 best and the 10 worst cross-accenters? Who can rival McGregor? Who belongs in the turkey salad with Sid James doing the Rumpo Kid? (Carry on Cowboy, if you've forgotten).
Roll call for all-time best would be: (1) Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs; (2) Alessandro Nivola in Mansfield Park (3); James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; (4) Jude Law in Cold Mountain (5); Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft (6); Gary Oldman in Romeo is Bleeding (7); Kate Hudson in The Four Feathers (8); Winona Ryder in Dracula (9); Cate Blanchett in The Life Aquatic (10).
Accents of shame: (1) Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty; (2) Keanu Reeves in Dracula; (3) Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins; (4) Bob Hoskins in Nixon; (5) Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire; (6) Willem Dafoe in The Reckoning; (7) Michael Caine in Jaws: The Revenge (8) Catherine Zeta Jones in Traffic (9); Anthony Hopkins in Bad Company; (10) Albert Finney in Erin Brockovich.
And the big raspberry for Sean Connery in every film where he doesn't wear a kilt.
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