I was watching my old 24 Season 1 DVDs and it brought back the memories of how awful Dennis Hopper was playing a Serbian man. And then I thought, is there a thread on TWoP about accents? I did a search and there wasn't so I thought I'd start this thread.

24's featured a lot of actors faking a lot of bad accents. But Greg Ellis as Michael Amador on Day Three totally rocked his Ukranian one, and spoke his lines in that language so well, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually speaks it IRL.

I think this thread belongs to Kendra the ‘Jamaican’ Vampire Slayer from BtVS. And Mollie the cockney Potential Slayer in S6 of BtVS, whose accent seemed to be based on that of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

The best? I'd say Alexis Denisof (Wesley) in BtVS/Angel - his was pretty much flawless. David Anders' as Sark on Alias is good at doing an English accent too.

Sandra Lee's "suthun" accent is laughably bad. (Of course, her whole show is laughably bad, so it fits.) Thankfully she's only rolled it out a couple of times.

I have to say it that the actor who played Niska on Firefly had a horrid East European accent. Gah.

David Boreanaz's Irish Angelus accent is dirt. A bit too "bejaysus, begorrah, top o de mornin' to yeh!" and not convincing.

Glenn Quinn's American accent on Roseanne is good. I didn't know he was Irish until he played Doyle and the accent he had is spot on for an Irish person who's been living in the States for a while.

Of all of the average-to-bad Russian and East European accents out there, you know who I think had the worst one (I'm not counting Garner, who speaks "Russian" with virtually no accent because IMHO she decided not to even try)? Nic Lea as Alex Krycek on The X-Files. Man, he sucked.

ETA: No posting before coffee, no posting before coffee...

Marianne Jean Baptiste's accent on Without a Trace. I completely forgot she was British during the first series..

Hugh Laurie is another Brit who does an excellent American accent on House. If I hadn't seen him in a number of British films, I would have never suspected he wasn't American.

I confess that James Marsters from BtVS and Angel completely had me WRT his British accent. I really had no clue until those ads came out.

Rachel Griffin from Six Feet Under does a good job of surpressing her natural Aussie accent.

His American accent was so good that when I first saw him as Doyle, I thought, "Hey, he does a really good Irish accent for an American guy!"

My mother is English and I lived there for several years, so I'm really tough on people doing English accents. David Anders and James Marsters were good, but not great. There were too many holes that were a bit jarring to me. Alexis Denisoff was absolute perfection. Never a single false note.

IMHO, of course.

Joely Richardson also does a fabulous job at being an American. I'm always amazed when I see her on interviews and she's British.

I know Alex Kingston (E.R.'s Lizzy Corday) is English, but did she exaggerate that accent for the States? To my British ears she sounds too plummy, like an American actress "doing" an accent.

Impressive tv accents: John Mahoney as Martin Crane on Frasier. Dominic West as Jimmy McNulty on The Wire. Those are the first two that spring to mind... does Portia De Rossi have an Australian accent in real life?

The original poster mentioned 24, and indeed Hopper's Victor Drazen sends me into all kinds of giggle fits.

This is a Worst Accents thread and Melissa George has yet to rear her ugly head? Even the writers made fun of it for crying out loud!

'Word' to the poster who mentioned Hugh Laurie. His accent is pretty damn near perfect, and his 'Englishman playing an American pretending to have a British accent' was brilliant, as well as hilarious.

Also Anthony LaPaglia and Poppy Montgomery from the same show who are both Australian. And I had no idea that Alexis Denisof was American at first.

His accent in Without a Trace is fine but he had the worst British accent I have ever heard in Frasier.

Jane Leeves from Frasier also sounds nothing like her character in real life, but I find her accent quite believable.

I think Idris Elba from The Wire and Eamon Walker from Oz do a spot on american accent. I've never would've guessed they're both British.

I don't know about Alex Kingston but this reminds me of a guest star on Smallville back during season 1. I hadn't heard of Kelly Brook at the time, but every time she opened her mouth, I thought, "Man, this actress is terrible. Her idea of an English accent is just horrible!" Well come to find out, she actually is English. I would have been embarrassed but lots of people I knew thought she sounded dreadful, too. Maybe she was trying to posh it up but the result was just... all wrong.

I remember her (I think she was referred to in the recaps as Chesty?) She had the same problem as Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, trying to sound posh but ending up actually sounding like a Victorian cockney chimneysweep. Uurgh. Wasn't Chesty supposed to be aristocratic, too? Hilarious.

I am not sure what this means - I always thought John Mahoney is American. Is he not?

While Anthony LaPaglia is Australian, I believe he has lived in the States for 20 years, and whenever I have heard him speak in interviews, he doesn't really have an Aussie accent - so I don't know how much his accent in Without A Trace differs from his real life.

The only actor I have heard do a decent Boston accent on a television show is Neal McDonough. Who is from the area, so that's not surprising.

John Mahoney is British, but he's been here in the States for a long time, and according to IMDb his British accent is long gone.

I don't have a contribution, but I have a couple questions.

Why do they have actors change their accents anyway?

Sometimes it makes sense. I don't watch House, but from the little I've seen, I can see why they might think it was difficult to have the character be a crusty old curmudgeon when it sounds like he's reciting Shakespeare.

But why on earth couldn't Marianne Jean Baptiste's character be British? Or LaPaglia or Montgomery be Aussie? Maybe they wouldn't want ALL of them to be "furriners" but a few here and there would just add to the appeal of these programs.

And on the other hand, when they do want a character with an accent, why don't they cast an actor who speaks it naturally instead of getting someone to fake an accent and have it sound dodgy?

Jamie Bamber does a really credible American accent on Battlestar Galactica.

Well, I have to say that in a procedural type of show like Without a Trace, I really don't have a problem with the actors changing their accents. Because really, how many British or Australian FBI agents are out there? But I have to put in the modifier 'if the actor can do it well,' because they are certainly examples where they can't. Take Louise Lombard on CSI, who sounds like she has marbles in her mouth when she does an American accent. She's very odd-sounding to my ears, so I wish they'd either let her use her natural accent or hire somebody who can do a better job.

Who does a credible fake Southern accent on tv? Where is Kyra Sedgewick from? I hear she does a good one on The Closer (although I've never watched it)

I think she was supposed to be, as her father was Sir Harry, but when he showed up, I think I came to the conclusion that he must have won his title in a Drunken Robin Leech Bad Impression contest.

What?!?! He's not british? Really? Whoa, how slow am I? Okay then...

I don't like Kyra's accent on The Closer. It sounds too exaggerated.

The people I've heard doing the best "fake Southern" have tended to be British like Vivienne Leigh, Olivia de Havilland...

Ian McShane's American accent on Deadwood is pretty flawless (as is everything on that show).

Nathan Fillion's southern accent on Firefly and Buffy on the other hand ...

Alexis Dennisoff (sic?) has family in Seattle and spent a good part of his early life in Maryland. British Drama school gave him the British accent.

I don't think Fillion's supposed to sound Southern in Firefly, but Western.

Yeah, I read somewhere that it was supposed to be kind of Oklahoman. Of course it takes place 500 years in the future, so I'm willing to give them a bit of leeway on accents.

The accent that always cracks me up a bit is Troi from ST: TNG. She was told to come up with a Betazed accent, but then her mom shows up without it and they say she talks like her dad. Then her dad shows up in a dream sequence in the later seasons and he doesn't have it. So basically, Troi just had a speech problem.

I agree about Rachel Griffiths, Ian MacShane, David Anders and Hugh Laurie. With Griffiths, even though I've seen her in movies, I totally forget that she's Australian when I watch her in SFU - on the recent "In Memorian" special, when she spoke with her own voice, I was quite stunned, in spite of my foreknowledge.

Kenneth Branagh is one of the best dialect actors I have ever seen - his German accent is flawless in "Conspiracy" [as it is in the big screen film "Dead Again" where he also does a lovely American accent for a different character] and he does a very good FDR in "Warm Springs" without getting too 'radio-voice' caricaturey.

I am told by TWoPpers who know much more than I do that Naveen Andrews' Iraqi accent in "Lost" is awful, but I must blushingly confess that I find it so sexy that I don't care about accuracy.

Glad someone mentioned this one. I've had to declare it among the worst accents ever. It grates.

According to IMDb Kyra Sedgwick was born in New York and went to college at USC. It doesn't mention where she grew up, but I'm going to guess that it wasn't in the South and that her accent is fake.

Damian Lewis's American accent in Band of Brothers is phenomenal. Scottish Robin Laing didn't do such a hot Philadelphia accent, though, and, for that matter, neither did New Yorker Frank John Hughes (who did get his "character's" speech and mannerisms down...just not the Philly accent).

I've seen Poppy Montgomery on a couple of late night TV talk shows and she always talks about how she completely lost her Australian accent. I don't remember the exact details, but she came to the US at age 18, and I guess just picked up the American accent. The funny thing now is she can't do a proper Australian accent anymore. She said her family makes fun of her because it's so embarrassingly bad. So the accent you hear on Without a Trace is actually the way she speaks now.

Word to Drusilla from BtVS and her "cockney chimney sweep" accent. I always thought that Alexis Denisof did an extraordinarily good job with his accent, James Marsters a pretty good job (and as time went on, though other things about his character became intolerable, the accent just kept improving), but Juliet Landau's was so ridiculous! The worst was when she would say Spike's name: "Spoike." Made me cringe every time.

David Boreanaz's Irish accent was SO laughable that it actually bothered me less. It just seemed like he wasn't trying very hard.

Also word to the love for Hugh Laurie's American accent. Once in a very great while I notice that his R's just seem the slightest bit too hard. Other than that, flawless.

I have to make a comment about the "accents" on The Sopranos. I was born and raised in North Jersey, and still live here. I find that on this show, the men do a great job of perfecting a typical Jersey accent, especially Michael Imperioli as Christopher and James Gandolfini as Tony. I know a few guys who sound like that. However, the women on this show sound just a little too exaggerated for me. Edie Falco is a great actress, but her accent as Carmela is way too over the top. Like I said, I was born and raised in the area, and my mother is Italian-American, and does not sound like that. She definately has a Jersey accent, but nowhere near as exaggerated. Carmela and Adrianna (R.I.P.) sound like they're making fun of Jersey accents rather than perfecting a real one.

Alona Tal (Meg on Veronica Mars) is from Israel. You would not know that from her voice.

In the world of Buffy and Angel, Kendra was certainly the worst accent. I think it was supposed to be Jamaican / West African, but there was some Scottish in it too, and something else I couldn't identify.

Fred had a "Texas" drawl that was miserable when she used it, but sometimes she wouldn't. It would switch on and off in the middle of a sentence.

I think I'd seen Glenn Quinn on Rosanne before I saw him play Doyle. But after watching Quinn on Angel, go back and watch some Rosanne. When you know what to listen for, it's hilarious. It sounds like a room full of Midwesterners and the gruff Lucky Charms guy.

Outside the Buffyverse, my favorite bad accent is Anthony LaPaglia's Brit on Frasier. Also, several actors have the Canadian hard-o "sorry". I hears Michael J. Fox explain the American "sorry" as "sari", the Indian wrap. He was kind of bragging about how he'd learned to speak with a flawless American accent. Then I saw him on Spin City, eh?

Odd thing, though, that at least in the first episode they referred to him as a "Limey," but yet he spoke in an American accent.

I'm British, and I can't really hear the difference between American and Canadian accents. Is Michael J Fox not American?

mediumdog, I've recently been rewatching the first two seasons of Newsradio on DVD and I see that creep into Dave Foley's accent every once in a while. I loved it when they made that an inside joke on the show, with people thinking his character is Canadian and him insisting that he's actually from Wisconsin.

ETA: Michael J. Fox is Canadian, Jenn--I think it's one of those things where it might be easy for Americans to tell but it's pretty subtle. It's sort of analogous to Americans having trouble telling the difference between the accents from different parts of England, I think. I couldn't identify, oh, say a Yorkshire accent for example. This probably also has to do with the fact that most of my family is Minnesotan and there are some similarities between Minnesotan accents and Canadian accents, as Fabrisse mentions.

E again TA: This is not to suggest that Canada is merely a region of the US as Yorkshire is a region of England--I don't want to offend any Canadians on the boards!

That pronuciation of "Sorry" can also be found in certain U.S. regional accents: Maine, Minnesota, and Richmond, VA being the ones that spring to mind. I've never thought of it as particularly Canadian because in Richmond we went "oat aboat the hoase" too.

Ugh, Juliet Landua's accent is one of the most obnoxious things ever. Not just in BtVS ever, EVER. So, so cloying, annoying and awful.

Thanks for bringing up this one--I was surprised she didn't make page 1! It always seemed weird to me that they didn't just have her do an American accent; she's done an okay one in other things I've seen. Instead, we got to "enjoy" the OmniAccent for a whole season.

Hopper's 24 accent is probably my favorite bad accent, though ("I vill git youuuu, Bauer!!").