Accents can be difficult for even the best performers to master, and some truly hilarious accents have ruined big movies. Given the immersive experience of a film, a bad accent can pull fans out of the storyline with jarring dialogue that doesn’t seem to fit what’s going on around the character. If everyone in the cast is employing a different accent, like in The Hunt for Red October this phenomenon isn’t as noticeable, but it becomes harder to ignore when the perpetrator’s delivery is distracting. Even the biggest stars in Hollywood are capable of phoning it in with a dialect that doesn’t make sense to their peers.
Some actors, like Daniel Day-Lewis or Meryl Streep are known for perfecting accents from all around the world, and Hugh Laurie and Christian Bale are so well-known for their ability to slip effortlessly into American accents that fans can’t believe they’re English, but those reputations come with time and dedication. Even with a concerted effort, some actors will never get to the point of perfecting an accent, while others will conceive accents with tropes and stereotypes to the extent that their character becomes a caricature. It doesn’t matter if this is a supporting or a lead role, a terrible accent can topple the entire production.
11 Kevin Costner In Robin Hood: Princes Of Thieves
All-American Kevin Costner begins the ’90s classic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with an English accent, but after a third of the way through the retelling of the English legend, he just stops altogether. It would have been better if he never attempted an English accent at all, especially since historically, Robin Hood wouldn’t have sounded the way a modern British accent sounds anyway. As a result of his muddled approach, his performance is jarring and out of sync with the rest of the cast, which includes Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman doing some scene-stealing work.
10 Mickey Rooney In Breakfast At Tiffany’s
Based on the popular book of the same name, Breakfast at Tiffany’s follows young partying socialites in New York and features a star-making role for Hollywood darling Audrey Hepburn playing a vapid wasp. Truman Capote’s novel does feature Mr. Yunioshi, but to see comedian Mickey Rooney portray the character with all sorts of terrible stereotypes (including pidgin English) is an insult to the source material as well as Japanese Americans. His appearance in the double Oscar-winning film almost makes it unwatchable by today’s standards.
9 Keanu Reeves In Bram Stoker’s Dracula
From Nicolas Cage to Bela Lugosi playing Dracula, many of Hollywood’s biggest stars have embodied the Prince of Darkness, including Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This fan favorite depiction of Stoker’s horror novel is nearly undone by a young Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula’s attorney, shares many scenes with Oldman, and speaks with an amalgamation of a Southern Californian and cockney accent, and the inconsistency has tarnished an otherwise well-constructed film. Director Francis Ford Coppola once claimed Reeves “wanted to do it perfectly, and in trying to do it perfectly, it came off as stilted” (via Entertainment Weekly).
8 Marlon Brando In Teahouse Of The August Moon
Marlon Brando is widely considered one of the greatest actors of his generation if not all time, but his performance as Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon is not included in his lengthy list of accomplishments for the simple fact that it showcases too many derogatory Asian stereotypes. With his eyelids taped back and his stuttering English, he’s an interpreter for an American G.I. who is unabashedly pro-colonization and defends the “honored conquerors” and the “benevolent assimilation of democracy by Okinawa.”
7 Daniel Craig In Tomb Raider
Alex West, the appropriately named American archaeologist and Lara Croft’s love interest in Tomb Raider, is played by none other than Daniel Craig, several years before he would be known as James Bond. He does his best at an American accent of indistinguishable origin, mostly emphasizing unexpected syllables as well as very nasal tones, which proves far more distracting than American actress Angelina Jolie giving her British accent a go. The accent also distracts from any chemistry the two are supposed to have, which as two performers known for their looks as well as their acting talent, is unfortunate.
6 Cameron Diaz In Gangs Of New York
Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York boasts a sprawling cast including Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis, as well as Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz playing a pair of Irish immigrants. DiCaprio fairs the best of the American actors as a young man infiltrating the ranks of the street gang operated by Day-Lewis’s Bill the Butcher, but Diaz as pickpocket Jenny can’t seem to decide if she’s Irish, cockney English, or American. Thanks to the wild inconsistency of her accent, Diaz’s is one bad performance in an otherwise perfect movie.
5 Richard Gere In The Jackal
In the ’90s thriller The Jackal, Richard Gere plays Declan, an IRA terrorist who teams up with a Russian agent to hunt down Bruce Willis’s titular character, a dangerous hit man trying to take out the Deputy Director of the FBI. Not only is the plot convoluted, but Gere’s Irish accent sounds like it belongs to a cereal brand mascot rather than an actual person. It was at a time when Gere was taking on gritty roles to try to rid himself of his reputation as a polished marquee idol, and unfortunately, The Jackal came out the same year Brad Pitt adopted a superior Belfast accent as an IRA member in The Devil’s Own.
4 Julia Roberts In Michael Collins
In a film bursting with Irish talent including Liam Neeson as the titular IRA hero, Brendan Gleeson, and Stephen Rea, Michael Collins also features Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan as Collins’ love interest. Roberts seems to be speaking in a very different dialect than the rest of the actors in the historical biopic, and one that doesn’t reflect the real Kiernan’s birthplace of County Longford. Her star status helped get the film off the ground, but it succeeded in spite of her terrible accent.
3 Nicolas Cage In Con Air
Nicolas Cage is known for being a versatile and intense actor who isn’t afraid to explore characters through body language and vocal inflection, but for some reason, a Southern accent in Con Air evades him. As an army ranger returning home from prison for accidentally killing a man in a bar fight, he has the decorum of a member of the US military, but his accent isn’t nearly as grounded. This is surprising, since he did such a convincing one in Raising Arizona.
2 Jean-Claude Van Damme In Street Fighter
Street Fighter isn’t considered a great movie, but it has earned status as a cult classic for fans of the video game and features a knockout performance by Raul Julia as General Bison. Opposite him is Colonel Guile, played by martial arts superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme, who tries to approximate an American accent but struggles to maintain it without his French accent slipping in all the time. Were it not for the American flag tattooed on his bicep, viewers wouldn’t be able to tell where Van Damme’s protagonist was from.
1 Tom Cruise In Far And Away
The movie that made Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman a Hollywood power couple, Far And Away also features a pretty abysmal Irish accent from Cruise. The movie cannot ignore Cruise’s leprechaun-like speech pattern, which stands out against all the Irish performers around him, and proves that even an actor known for giving 110% in all his roles can occasionally miss the mark. While his accent is dodgy, there’s no doubt about the renowned Cruise enthusiasm on display throughout the sweeping romance.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
