Worst Accents

[Wales2004]

I'll just throw in fake Jamaican accents. If I know it's going to be part of a movie or show beforehand, I won't bother watching. I am more lenient if it's part of a comedic sketch.

I have also heard a lot of pretty terrible attempts at southern drawls that are too exaggerated.

[SFK]

English actors are known for being particularly good at American southern accents because the pronunciations and rhythms are quite similar.

Where is Kristina Wagner from? She has an interesting relationship with vowels.

These are not necessarily examples of bad accents rather than annoying speech habits, but I could not stand to hear Griffin on AMC and Cole and Roseanne on OLTL speak. Roseanne drove me crazy every time she said, "Chrish-chun". UGH!

[DRW50]

SOAPY GOODNESS SOAPY GOODNESS SOAPY GOODNESS!

Oh wait. It's a broke down eyesore road show production of Grease that rips off the backers and sneaks out of town at 4 AM.

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[All My Shadows]

Oh, here's an easy one! Not a daytime soap, but Connor Paolo's....whatever...accent on Revenge is blood-boiling.

[jwsel]

This may have changed, but when I was studying abroad in England in the late 80s, I took a theatre class taught by an English actor, who explained that British actors are told when they first started acting to choose one American dialect as their "American accent," master that dialect, and rely on it exclusively unless they absolutely must learn a particular American dialect for a role. He also said that some British actors find Southern acccents easier to learn, because they bear certain similarities to common British dialects.

The result of that approach can be rather amusing to American audiences. In the late 1980s, I saw a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Man Who Came to Dinner, which is about an overbearing New York radio host who gets stuck recovering from a hip injury in Ohio. The location is key to the plot, and the radio host is supposed to be an outsider in this small town. But in the British production, almost every cast member had a different accent. There were two young characters who were supposed to be in love. He sounded like he was from Brooklyn; she sounded like a southern belle. Other characters seemed to have arrived in Ohio by way of Boston and California. The only actor I recall sounding like he was from Ohio was a very young Ralph Fiennes, who had a small role and did a dead-on Jimmy Stewart impression.

[DRW50]

That's a fascinating story. I wonder how many British actors were inspired by Vivien Leigh, who was perfection as Scarlett O'Hara.

When I watched that other clip with the Doctor Who actors they keep sounding like Nicholson or de Niro, which is a little bizarre.

[AdelaideCate007]

I got beat to it, but I was going to say that it's pretty easy for British/Australians to do a Southern American accent. Like SFK said, a lot of the rhythms and pronunciations and basic way of forming words is extremely similar. I used to try to speak in an American accent and no matter how hard I tried not to, I always ended up sounding Southern.

Even though it's supposedly his real accent, Ethan on GH's accent always felt forced and way over done. Siobhan's was also very bad.

[frequentsoapfan]

Up NP who played Ethan was raised American in Texas he was just born in Austrailia and I don't even think his parents are Aussie. That was a fake accent that he based off Jack Sparrow. That's why it was so forced and overdone. I hear dhim explain it in an interview on some show where he was speaking in his regular tone.