Don Cheadle - Ocean's 11

There are plenty of examples of Americans doing terrible non-American accents, but my favorite is when Brits or Aussies try to do an American accent. I think they're convinced we all sound either like Tony Soprano or Walter Brennan. Sometimes its a wierd combination of the two. See any BBC show that features an American character for an example of what I'm talking about.

That truly is a terrible accent. The first one that came to mind was one already mentioned (Dick Van Dyke...Mary Poppins). The second that came to mind was Ewan McGregor in Black Hawk Down. Truly horrible. There are a few English actors in that who do bad American accents though.

My wife watches Britcoms, and I've seen a few of these "American" characters. There are usually certain words/phrases that the actors can't do right and their original accent slips through.

And I cringe when the default accent is a "Texas Accent".

I seem to remember Brendan Gleason doing a terrible American accent. I just can't remember what film it was.

Safe House

As much as I love him, Liam Neeson can never pull off a convincing American accent. He has as hard a time hiding his Irish accent as Gerard Butler has hiding his own Scottish accent. Also, Sean Connery can never mask his accent Scottish accent.

Amanda Tapping in the series Sanctuary. Granted, we only watched part of the first season, her accent in that series may have improved with time, but we couldn't figure out what she was going for. Whatever she was going for just didn't sound right. -kd5-

You're just being wicked haad on those people.

While it wasn't necessarily bad, I still remained unconvinced by Alison Brie in The Five Year Engagement, mainly because of seeing her week in and week out on Community. Plus the accent inflections, etc seemed to be dropped immediately when she did the Cookie Monster voice. I assume it's hard to do an accent within an accent, but Mike Judge does it well when he has Beavis and Butthead impersonating people, stuff like that.

Has Connery ever played an American? I recall only THE ANDERSON TAPES, a New York-set caper film, although I'm not sure his origin was supposed to be American in that one and I can't remember if he tried an American accent or not. He also didn't have a lot of dialogue in that one.

And in THE UNTOUCHABLES, he was playing Irish. Any Irishmen here who can critique his accent in that one?

He played a Russian in The Hunt for Red October. He's supposed to be English in the Bond films but still speaks with a Scottish accent. And an Irishman does not sound the same as a Scott (though there are similarities).

Although Branagh would have been awesome in Dead Alive, I think you mean Dead Again. And yeah, I remember his clenched teeth accent being distractingly horrible.

I've never seen him in interviews, but I saw a few out takes and bloopers from "Sons" and he talks the exact same way as he does on the show.

Really!? I thought he nailed it. And I disagree with someone mentioning Leonardo in "Blood Diamonds". I rolled my eyes during the trailer, but when I finally saw the film, I thought he was amazing.

He probably stays in character voice for whatever reason while filming. See Undeclared for an example of what his natural speaking voice is like.

But I don't know if he qualifies as bad. Before I realized he was British I bought him as American.

Almost everybody who plays JFK.

I think most Brits do Americans well. I'm guessing most "average" viewers out there have no idea that people like Andrew Lincoln and Steven Moyer aren't Americans.

Sean Connery doesn't belong in this thread. Him not even bothering to cover up his accent is beyond legendary.

Then you get stuff like Enemy at the Gates, which is a movie filmed in English about foreigners, so you get a default British accent for all of the Russian soldiers, then the German soldiers all get American accents. Kind of strange.

Shia Lebouf attempting a southern accent in Lawless was cringeworthy

Anytime I see Guy Pierce attempt a Southern accent, it just seems phoney to me.

Agree with an earlier comment that Gerard Butler has an awful American accent.

Isn't Bryan Mills supposed to be American?

Dennis Hopper in the first season of 24 comes to mind.