British English vs. American English

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by poli

Hard question,but internet helped. This is excellent because you will hear
the clips and not just see the names. Madonna's British is really awful, even though she lived in Britain for years.
http://www.empireonline.com/features...-accents/5.asp

Thank you for that (I had to get another video with the same content). Not a good movie to learn English. Also, congratulations on your encyclopaedic knowledge about cinema and musicals; I always enjoy your comments on those subjects.

Madonna and "el tano" made me remind "Eversmile, New Jersey", an Argentine movie from 1989 spoken in English and starred by Daniel Day-Lewis (pour guy, what you have to do when you are starving ... if you want to suff.. I mean, to watch the trailer, it's here). The director has very good movies and shorts, but in this case he achieved an English actor not even speaking English.

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

I would like to ask you about examples you can give of actors -or characters- in movies and series, whose accent is OK or whose accent is perceived as fake. That's not a trivia question, because it allows me and everyone to compare and test our abilities and know if we got "it". For instance, like Lou Ann, I also like The Closer -I watched maybe a whole season- but I never realized that the main character is supposed to be from Georgia -I had a hard time understanding a friend of mine from Athens, though she sounded like Julia Roberts but with stronger accent-.

Another example would be Marianne Jean-Baptiste, a British actress on the show Without a Trace. When I first saw the show I never suspected that she wasn't from the US Northeast. Then I saw her in a commercial, and was shocked by her British accent. Born in London, 1967. Hmmmm....

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by laepelba

Then I saw her in a commercial, and was shocked by her British accent. Born in London, 1967. Hmmmm....

Oh dear - shocked? There is no such thing as a British accent. You can have an Irish accent, a Welsh accent, a Manx accent, a Scottish accent, or any other kind, but a British accent has no meaning whatsoever.