Top 5 Worst/Best Foreign Accent-Putter-On-ers in Movies.

I like nothing better/worse than a hard ‘R’ from a British person pretending to be an American person.  Linus Roach, the new ADA on Law and Order has been pleasing me no end this year.  So in case we like-a both the same, here’s a list of my favorite masters of the bad, film-overshadowing accent.  For simplicity’s sake I’ll confine this list the the last few decades.  If we go further into the past we have to discuss what kind of accent Tony Curtis should have been attempting in Spartacus, an English-language movie about Romans and bring in all of the violence that has been done to Native American and Puerto Rican accents by white people, which would take all day.

5. Robert Redford in Out of Africa.  “He didn’t do an accent,” you say?  Correct. Because he decided his British accent wasn’t ready or was bad and so they started shooting with him just doing his regular accent, planning to fix it somewhere down the road (I presume by starting to shoot with the British accent at some point when he felt confident and going back and ADRing the early stuff). But he just never got it. So a guy named Denis Finch-Hatton with very specific ideas about Britain’s place in World War I became an American guy who came over from Britain with his British best friend that he met in British school.

4. Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly (and Michael Collins). Sounds like a two-hour, whispered Lucky Charms commercial.

3. Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  Man oh Mando. So delicious. Especially when all attempts at Britishness break right in the middle of a sentence, usually during some very emotional scenes, for example, standing over Brian Blessed’s grave: “I swear my father will be aveeeeahnged. ”

2. Anthony Hopkins in Nixon, Legends of the Fall and anything else where he plays an American.  God love him, he’s one of the greatest actors around, but these accents, which shift regions and jump oceans frequently, sometimes in a single word, are a big, amorphous weak spot.  Maybe he’s not as bad as Costner.  I can’t tell if I’m judging him too harshly because he’s a good, British actor who should be able to pull it off, or not harshly enough.  In any case, he can’t go higher on this countdown than number 2, since there’s only one guy who I could ever put in the top spot.  Only one guy who’s really earned it.  I think you know who I’m talking about.

1. Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire, Seven Years in Tibet, The Devil’s Own and Meet Joe Black.  I don’t think the word “virtuoso” is inappropriate here. Where accents are concerned, he never met one he couldn’t fuck up. Kind of like in Good Will Hunting how Will Hunting is not only good at math but also at English, History, and basically any other subject he tries his hand at.  Brad Pitt would proably even be bad at an Australian accent, which my cat could pull off (at least to the satisfaction of an American audience) with few hitches.  And it’s not just that he’s bad.  It’s how he’s bad.  How he’s indescribably bad.  How he’s bad in a way that changes constantly and never simply fades into the background.  You can have your Leo DiCaprios and their  Gangs of New York Irish accents.  They’re just thin, not extending to each word.  But Brad Pitt is taking you to another place when he does his French and German and Irish and Death accents, and one thing’s for damn sure: that place ain’t France, Germany, Ireland or Death, respectively.  Alas, much like Jim Carey and funny movies, Brad Pitt has stopped doing bad accent movies.  I guess when you are at the top/bottom of your game, you need to hang ‘em up and dominate some other game so that there’s room for newcomers.  I admire that, but it nonetheless seems like a shame.

Honorable Mention: Nic Cage in any movie where he tries to scam someone by doing a British or other accent. This is not to say that, when he actually feels like working, he can’t credibly put on an accent (see: Raising Arizona) or make up a credible one of his own (see: Peggy Sue Got Married).  Rather, I’m saying that his one-scene-only accents in films that he’s clearly just doing for a paycheck are incredibly worth your time if you haven’t seen them.  I can’t remember where they are off the top of my head, but I’d say a good place to start looking is Gone in 60 Seconds and the National Treasure movies.

Also, in case you’re wondering why I didn’t bring up movies like JFK and Benjamin Button above, Americans doing bad regional American accents are not included here.  They need to be on a separate, thoroughly considered list, because that’s a very competetive field, since every lightweight actress attempts to give the impression of range by taking a movie where she wants to do one. So i feel like the only real way to get to the bottom of who is the worst/best at it is to form a panel of independent experts.  However, I will say that I believe Rob Morrow’s Dick Goodwin from Quiz Show should and would finish rather high (or low, depending on how you see it) in the rankings.  Chahlie. Tell me you didn’t get the ansa’s Chahlie.