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Who should/could be a Bond actor?

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  • sandbagger1sandbagger1 Sussex
    Posts: 998
    Generally Hollywood leading men simply don't want to put the time in to master a good British accent when they could be chasing girls. I think that's largely all there is to it - the U.S. leading men feel too secure to put themselves out, because they just don't care. Particularly the English upper-class accent is a difficult one to pull-off because it's not a relaxed accent, yet you have to sound comfortable and casual with it, which generally means adopting it 24/7 for several months. Many American actresses have, on the other hand, made some very good stabs at it because they are actually willing to take the time to get it right because it is harder for them (or was, things have changed) to get good roles.
  • dewiparrydewiparry
    Posts: 36
    Ludovico wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    I'd like to find a linguistics expert to explain why Brits seem to do an OK American accent but not the reverse ("The Order" a recent example). I just cant imagine an American actor in the Bond role.

    Probably because Brits are exposed to American culture (films, TV) way more than vice versa, so the American accents are more familiar to Brits than British accents are to Americans.

    I'm a bit of a linguist, although I'm not a specialist. I suspect there are a number of factors involved. America is the dominant culture, so less likely to adapt to other realities. You see the same with French: not only they are unable to create a genuine Québec accent, but often they cannot distinguish it from a Belgium one. A Québec actor can usually neutralise his accent fairly easily if the role requires it. Then some cultures are physically more accute to sounds differences and can modulate their voice accordingly. Russians for instance are apparently better at learning foreign languages because of this.
    Great post and insight! I think American guys exaggerate their dialect when trying accents. Then again Johnny Depp could do it many times.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,417
    dewiparry wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    patb wrote: »
    I'd like to find a linguistics expert to explain why Brits seem to do an OK American accent but not the reverse ("The Order" a recent example). I just cant imagine an American actor in the Bond role.

    Probably because Brits are exposed to American culture (films, TV) way more than vice versa, so the American accents are more familiar to Brits than British accents are to Americans.

    I'm a bit of a linguist, although I'm not a specialist. I suspect there are a number of factors involved. America is the dominant culture, so less likely to adapt to other realities. You see the same with French: not only they are unable to create a genuine Québec accent, but often they cannot distinguish it from a Belgium one. A Québec actor can usually neutralise his accent fairly easily if the role requires it. Then some cultures are physically more accute to sounds differences and can modulate their voice accordingly. Russians for instance are apparently better at learning foreign languages because of this.
    Great post and insight! I think American guys exaggerate their dialect when trying accents. Then again Johnny Depp could do it many times.

    Thanks! Personally I was never impressed by Johnny Depp's English accent. It's better than most, but I nothing more.

    I think another difference might be educational: I suspect the way they learn acting in the UK puts more emphasis on pronunciation, diction, rhythm, etc. If American actors use more say method acting, this might handicap them with pronunciation in a radically different accent. But this is purely an hypothesis, I don't have enough knowledge of the acting world in both countries to go further.

    That said, I have an anecdote which might be relevant. During my years at uni in the UK, we had a drama club that made a lot of productions in a year. All sorts of things, plays made by the members (often pretentious rubbish), plenty of comedies, but also a good deal of dramas, mostly Shakespeare. They made fairly solid and well received productions of Shakespeare's tragedies, but they really struggled when they produced Arthur Miller's The Crucible. They could barely remember their lines and spoke them as if they were reading. So maybe we should cut American actors some slack: how many British actor do we hear speaking with a seamless American accent?
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