Where You From? Eight Terrible Movie Accents
Acting can be a challenging task and adding an accent to the role can make things even harder. Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis have shown how mastering an accent can help a role to become iconic and even land you several Oscars. But for some, speaking in a different dialect can be quite problematic. The worst offenders inadvertently turn a drama into a comedy whenever they speak. Here are some of Hollywood’s most famous actors and the accents that they couldn’t nail down.
Angelina Jolie (Alexander)
Angelina Jolie has arguably become the biggest A-Lister in Hollywood, with an Oscar, humanitarian work, and a marriage to Brad Pitt. Her career that allows her to choose just about any role she wants to. One role she should have skipped was playing Olympias in 2004’s Alexander. She took on a Greek accent so bad that it sounded like she was playing a relative of Count Chocula. Maybe a third ‘Tomb Raider’ was the better choice in hindsight.
Richard Gere (The Jackal)
If you ever wanted to know what the Lucky Charms mascot would sound like if he was an imprisoned IRA sniper, look no further than the 1997 film ‘The Jackal’. If there was ever an instance of a director telling an actor to ‘dial it back a bit’, it should have been this. Yes, some people have a thick Irish accent, but others have one so soft that you might mistake them for a British person. Gere’s is neither of those, and doesn’t even seem to exist in nature.
Keanu Reeves (Dracula)
No one can argue that Keanu Reeves isn’t the greatest actor of all time, but that doesn’t disguise the fact that his British accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the most laughable attempts at an accent in movie history. Without any knowledge of the movie at all, you might think that Reeves is doing another ‘Bill & Ted’ movie where his character says a word in a British accent every so often. Just because British actors have to come and take all the American roles doesn’t mean it has to be the other way around.
Sean Connery (The Untouchables)
Sean Connery may be the king of bad accents, with nearly all of his foreign characters just appearing as Sean Connery in period garb. Connery’s role as Irish-American cop Jim Malone in The Untouchables had him delve into an American accent and then take a sharp right turn into a Chicago dialect that is dizzying to listen to. Connery did win the Academy Award for the role, leaving the other nominees asking why they even bother trying anymore.
Josh Hartnett (Blow Dry)
The 2001 British comedy was barely seen by American audiences which is actually a good thing for Josh Hartnett, whose Yorkshire accent is so badly performed that it makes you wonder how he landed the role in the first place. Hartnett acts as if he will get an electric shock if he commits to the accent too much leading to absolutely brutal lines like “Nawt su bad! Notsubadatallle!” If only he had been in the real Pearl Harbor.
Anne Hathaway (One Day)
The 2011 film One Day follows Anne Hathaway’s character and the romantic journey she has over the course of 23 years. If only Hathaway’s character could have slowly lost her British accent over the two decades that the film takes place, then it may have sounded believable. Hathaway makes it seem like it is her first time attempting the accent and just and just plain gives up by the end of the movie. If someone spoke in that slight of an English accent in real life, they’d be institutionalized.
Shia LaBeouf (Nymphomaniac)
While we at least know the accents that the other actors on this list were attempting, we don’t know what Shia LaBeouf is even attempting in Nymphomaniac. While the actual location of the film is unclear, LaBeouf’s character comes from a British family, yet he speaks with a Scandinavian accent that sometimes borders on South African. It’s odd that LaBeouf even chooses to use an accent, seeing that there are several characters in the movie that decide not to use one. Why did you do this LaBeouf? What are you hiding!?
Brad Pitt (Meet Joe Black)
You may be a bit confused if you haven’t seen the film Meet Joe Black, but no, this movie isn’t a comedy. Brad Pitt’s character acts as the guide to death and is helping an older Jamaican woman reach the other side by comforting her in her native dialect. Why anyone thought this was necessary is a mystery, and it appears that the director let Pitt know of this decision on the day this was filmed. Just be glad that this movie didn’t come out in 2014, or poor Brad would be on an apology tour across America.
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