As a half Irish guy, I feel like I can say that Brad Pitt's accent wasnt even all that bad, he tried his best. Tom Cruise, however, sounds like a bloody racist person trying to do a stereotypical Irish accent.
As someone who was born and raised in Northern Ireland where Brad Pitt's accent is supposed to be from, I can honestly say it was perfect. Same with his accent in Snatch. Two of what I think are the most difficult (or at least the most often butchered) accents to fake, and I think he did them perfectly.
As someone who had the 'fortune' many years ago to work in a bar frequented by a whole caravan-park-full of Irish 'travelers', I'd have to say Brad Pitt was spot on :D
lloyd watkinson I'm not trying to put you down or anything, but I have two things to say to you: Firstly, pikey is a racist word for Irish people, so you should use the term 'traveller' when referring to those people. Secondly, you said that 90% of travellers were born in England which is absolutely absurd. The majority were born in Ireland, please look it up.
Silent Warrior dont know if youre american or other, but in britain we have pikeys and that is who he was playing. Its sort of irish crossed with nonsense! And he did it quite well really. I guess the people at watchmojo could be forgiven for not knowing what he should have sounded like, they probably thought he was just doing a bad irish accent!
Rossi the Bossi I didn't say it was bad or anything, I just couldn't understand what he was saying. I'm not very familiar with a variety of different accents, but I'll take your word for it that he did well. Yeah, Watchmojo may have thought it was bad, but no one has to agree with them, lol.
There is an Irish RU-vid channel called Facts. There is a video where Irish people judge Irish accents in movies done by Americans and they said Brad Pitt was the best and that they could understand him in snatch.
TheAwesomeLena What part of Russia? Black Widow's accent speaking in English is non-existant I'll agree, but I've heard from a friend in St. Petersburg that was the first she's heard true Russian spoken in an American film. Ironic given her origins.
Well both my parents are from the far-east side of Russia (i was born in Aus but i speak fluently). But it was some of the best ive heard from any actor/actress (Scarlett Johansons russian, not Alec Baldwins. His was absolute piss lol) given the circumstances. hahaha
Scarlett Johansson didn't even try to sound Russian in that movie. She just stuck to her native American accent when she was Black Widow. I agree, she should have tried to do a Russian accent considering she was portraying a Russian Marvel Comics character.
the best russian ive heard from an american actor was viggo mortenesn from eastern promises, dude not only sounded russian, but sounded like a russian ganster
"You're not goin anywhere ya thick lump, you'll stay until the jobs done" and "Did you do it?", are one of the few lines I understood from his dialogue
I don't think a lot of these are bad accents necessarily... I just think that we're SO used to certain actors' voices and normal accents that hearing them do another is often strange and sounds weird and takes away the believability... but they're not necessarily bad. :)
As much as I love her, Halle Berry deserves an honorable mention for her African accent as Storm (Ororo Munroe) in the X-Men movies. I assume she was going for a Kenyan accent, but it was atrocious and faded in and out.
No man, defo not......its like he was trying to be a traveller, but had never spoken to one in his life! All he knew was to talk quickly, but he really hadn't the voice down........Coming from a Mayo beure!
The strange thing about Schwarzenegger movies is that whilst nearly all his characters have English surnames like Quaid, Richards, Kimble and Tasker, he simply cannot do anything other than his own brand of an Austrian accent.
That's not an Austrian accent. It's a Schwarzenegger accent. He sounds very much the same in English and in German. Being an Austrian myself I've never met anyone here who speaks like Schwarzenegger...
Brad Pitt didn't sound too bad in the clips shown and the jury has ruled that his Snatch accent was incredible. It was made to be uniquely indecipherable and yet at the same time he is actually saying words...he's kinda like Kenny from South Park in that regard.
I feel bad for Keanu. Why would they put him in a movie that required thick accents when most people were fully aware he only sounded good when talking under his breath. So basically, every line of dialogue he has in "The Matrix"
Brad Pitt's accent in the Snatch is AMAZING!!!! As well as his facial expressions, the ways he moves his eyebrows and smiles... I've lived in East London for four years and Brad Pitt manages to reproduce a perfect cockney accent and attitude... and he is American! Not even English people can reproduce that accent, sometimes! Brad Pitt was the sexiest man alive, but he has always been a great actor (perhaps too much underrated).
vins1979 My father can. He has perfected both a cockney accent, and a Reading accent. My father was born in the West Ham area, known for its cockney accent, but he soon picked up on the Reading accent when he moved.
I honestly feel that Keanu's accent worked in Dracula, even if it is bad. The whole movie strikes a great balance at the center of serious artistry and serious cheesiness, with lots of exploitation and camp thrown in.
Are you pulling my leg? My husband is English, I lived there, and when I saw the movie I was like WTF? He's not the greatest actor as it is. Although it was cool when he bought me dinner.
Kathyuk28 I agree that, as a simulation of an English accent, it was pretty bad. But are realism & accuracy really that important in a Dracula movie? For me, 1992's _Dracula_ works as a movie because it embraces equally its triumphs, its cliches and its outright badness with arms clad in silky red lingerie and the warm gaze of a lover drunk with a rich red wine. The bad parts are so lusciously bad that they become good-Keanu's accent included. That's my take anyway. You're free to have a different one: it's just a self-indulgent horror movie. :-)
As much of a Gary Oldman fan as I am Keanu's and Wynona's accents completely ruined the movie for me. I sat through it once in the theater and avoided it ever since.
Brad Pitt's accent in Snatch is intentionally gypsy, and it's actually quite good, considering Irish gypsies all have different variations on the Irish accent, none of which anyone who isn't a gypsy can ever understand.
Dublin17Ireland His accent in The Devil's Own was a Northern Irish accent, which most people are unfamiliar with. I think he got it spot on! It's only crap if you're expecting him to sound like he's from Dublin (and not Belfast). Gypsy accent was excellent too!
Ok my mom is born in Raised in Dublin Ireland, i have been there 3 times, I have heard both normal and gypse accents. BRAD PITTS ACCENT WAS AWESOME!! Why the hell did they put him in this ??
I was half-expecting Kate Winslet's accent in Titanic. Even though it['s not that great, it works because her character was living in the 1910s or 1920s, where word articulation was a bit more pronounced and quick in America then than it is now, and she kind of already does with her natural English accent.
Val Kilmer - The Ghost and the Darkness. Horrendously bad Irish accent. Cate Blanchett - Indianna Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, she totally forgets to do her terrible Russian accent half the time. Also Brad Pitt's 'pikey' accent is absolutely spot on.
thankyou! pikey, not irish. he could have slurred a little more but as close as you'd get with a yank. it comes to something though when british actors do American dialects better than those from the damned place.
Speaking of Indiana Jones, it always makes me laugh in THE LAST CRUSADE when Harrison Ford says "No ticket" in his everyday voice and all the German people on the zeppelin think he's also German. What makes it worse is that we see in that very scene that Indy knows some German, so couldn't he at least have said "Keine Fahrkarte"?
Brad Pitt's accent in Snatch is decent, most (not all, I admit and acknowledge) of the Irish people I have met/know actually said that his Irish accent was quite good.
***** thats bollox, im from cork too and i thought he did a great job, ffs sake we,re not film critics down here, you kind of make cork people look a bit stuck up with your comment, lithen up a small bit will ya
I love it when Brad Pitt does accents. What idiot decided to put him in this list? I'm of German descent and I thought his Austrian accent was pretty spot on in 7 Years in Tibet. Very impressive film.
Hyper Horse 7 Years in Tibet was the film that showed me he wasn't just a pretty-boy "actor." Even as a pre-teen watching that I thought "Dang, he's got some talent!"
He said he was taught by an Irishman who taught him to do it like that. If you want someone to learn an accent you get them someone who has that accent.
I always wondered why Americans find it so difficult to do a British accent. Jonny Depp is one of the only one's I can think of who can pull it of pretty consistently.
I agree. That's because Depp likes to observe people very carefully and does his research properly and prepares for his roles for a long time and very passionately. I don't know about Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves. It is difficult to do an accent but they're actors, that's their job.
***** Yes! I absolutely love Gerry, but they should just cast him in roles where he can have his own accent. But PS I Love You is the worst. I kept trying to figure out what it was he was trying to do, until they said he was Irish. He has also since apologized to the Irish people for that attempt. LOL
Brad Pitt's accent in Snatch was so fricking cool!!!. Surprised to see Dick Van Dyke at number 3 though...Michael Caine in 'On Deadly Ground' was awful, that being said the film wasn't that great either.
Maddolis The irony is Hollywood is loaded with Aussies and Kiwis who flawlessly play American characters (like The Walking Dead, etc.). Am frequently surprised to hear in interviews these heavy accents suddenly emerge from so many actors.
In partial defence of the actors in the list, getting a foreign accent right isn't an easy task at all; especially when they have to portray a foreign character who speaks English with a foreign accent, it's really easy to end up sounding like a mockery. Then again, cases like Costner not even trying to sound British in Robin Hood or how Connery made Russian sound Scottish were actually unintentionally funny.
Tom Flower Maybe that's what it is. I have a country twang, slight but still there. I also have many friends with thick and heavy twangs. But her? Oy! Lol.
Honourable mention to Quentin Tarantino in Dango: Unchained for his terrible Australian accent. I mean, yeah it was only a cameo and he directed a great film, but that accent was abysmal.
Not to mention that it was based in the 1850's... meaning that that outback aussie accent didn't really even exist yet... most still had their British accents.
Jaden Smith in After Earth is without a doubt one of the worst I've ever heard. But, to be fair, his voice and vocal inflection doesn't really let him do any accents anyways.
I don't know if I'd count that since it's a voice for a people that technically don't exist from a planet that doesn't exist. It's odd, but it's not grounded in reality. TERRIBLE movie though.
have you noticed Arnie still uses his accent even when he's playing an american character, and no one gives a damn? how can the characters in the movies never question: ´´dude, are you german or something?´´
for a start in The Hunt for The Red October Connery didn't even attempt and accent so why even mention it. Brad Pitt in Snatch was playing a pikey and was meant to be unintelligible because those people has pretty poor speech as it is.
At the time when Robin Hood supposedly existed back in the 13th century, Middle English was spoken in England wouldn't have sounded like it does today anyway and was closer to Anglo-Saxon, so Costner's bad British accent didn't matter. For that matter, even Elizabethan English of Shapekpeare's time, which is almost modern English and spoken a few centuries later, probably sounded much closer to American English than what we think of as the "correct" British accent (as if there was one British accent anyway!)
I really gotta learn to read. Yesterday I misread "traitors" for "trailers" and today I read "accidents" instead of "accents" But top ten movie accidents would be a good one too.
It's so hilarious, it makes me think of Fox in Back to the Future III. You know, and he himself knows, Fox isn't serious (in his accent) in that movie.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS POINT ENOUGH: being Australian and watching every. single. American. film that has freaking Australian characters in it played by Americans just DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME. For example; Pacific Rim. Look, I forget the name of the "Australian" guy with the beard, but I know the perfect look-a-like who is actually starring in Rake. He is also known as Richard Roxburgh. Also, one of the WORST Australian voice acting I have ever heard is practically all the actors in Dead Island. HOW MUCH WORSE CAN YOU GET?! Sorry for the mini rant. It just pisses me off so, so much that no directors (except Australian directors) bother to just get an Australian actor/actress to play the part of an Australian character. Aussies, please like if you fully understand what I am saying here.
***** oooh, there are quite a few in an Australian's opinion. Asher Keddie, Hugh Sheridan, Rebecca Gibney, Richard Roxburgh. But most of the "not so good" Aussie actors are the ones in film, not in Australian drama.
branot89 Thank you!!! The only reason I came to this video, to see if it was on the list. Another fucking movie wasting his talents, and it brought down Robert De Niro too.
I actually recognized most of his words, and English isn't even my mother tongue. I can't believe native speakers have problems with that. What is really hard for me to understand, is that Dara O'Briain's hyperfast Irish - I have to turn subtitles on.
AdderallxAdmiral I never said she was mimicking an accent. I just think her actual accent is just has bad as these horribly put-on accents. "British accents" is a broad classification considering there are so, SO many different accents, dialects, etc. And just because you specifically don't hear a term often doesn't mean its hardly ever used. It may just be regional. Like *bloke*, *chav*, or *twat*.
So, there were 4 Failures on this listrom actors attempting and irish accent. I knew there were going to be some bad irish accents on this, but given that the colloquial language changes in ireland pretty much every 10 miles, i cant blame them. I am Irish, and even I can fail at my own accent..
All of them Brits and Australians doing various American accents no doubt. Unlike American actors who train as the need arises, they continuously study to work the larger American market. Hence the number of very good ones on American TV and movies.
TheOneTrueKit Not that Bale is the best example, but one of the the most successful film franchise incarnations of any superhero is nothing to sneeze at. He did his part playing both lead roles of Wayne and Batman
I must admit, as a Southerner, it is VERY hard for those outside the South to pick up the nuances of our accent. The best at it are Brits, because much of our accent comes from their language and we've just softened it a bit
***** tbh Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's accents were legitimately awful, and I say this as someone born and raised in Ireland. Brad Pitt, however, did his accent PERFECTLY. And I am really picky when it comes to Americans faking Irish accents.
Im irish living in north america. This explains why people tell me I don't sound like an Irish person- because I don't speak like a leprechaun, teheechacha diddley dee potato
As a south african, I think Leonardo DiCaprio's accent in Blood Diamond wasn't very good, it wasn't horrible but still seemed as though he just couldn't get it right, something American actors are quite bad at is accents.
That I agree with, but she has been stateside so long she has adopted a more North American accent. If you are using her to generalize, that;s a small sample size.I could bring up dicaprio, pitt, even brando, tom cruise, seagal, cameron diaz, nicolas cage, angelina jolie, julia roberts, kevin costner, keanu reeves, harrison ford, voight have all done atrocious accents and yet there are australian, british, south african, irish actors who can nail an array of different American accents better than any American actor.
Literally NO one can do an irish accent.. unless you're actually irish.. And by ''irish'', i mean born and lived in Ireland your whole life and hold an irish passport... You are NOT irish if you are american and your grandmothers ex husbands daughters cousin is of irish descent.
Good luck convincing people here of that. We have all kinds of people who say they are Irish, Mexican, Polish, German, etc etc. and have never stepped foot in those countries.
It's all well and good saying that but when Ireland is looking for sports players the 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation or so-called "plastic paddys" are welcomed with open arms. You can't have it both ways.
I hope the implication isn't that Mel Gibson's "British accent" was horrible in Braveheart... It would be very out of place speaking a British accent (any of them) while leading the Scottish to war... it'd be wrong on so many levels.
Take from me, it was appalling. None of us could work out what it was meant to be. Believe me, no on in Scotland speaks remotely like that - or Scotty from Star Trek.
Community Emerald And rap about it: I don't mind ads, I don't mind buffer, But when ads buffer, I really fucking suffer. I got AdBlock plus, I got NoScript, Now that damn ad's ass is totally ripped. Yo.
Seriously? Number one should have been Sean Connery in the Highlander series. He plays Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, a Spaniard who lived in Egypt for hundreds of years then went to the Orient to end up with a SCOTTISH accent.
I'm from UK and I thought Mikey from Snatch sounded cool. You weren't meant to be able to understand him. That was the idea.. No fucker understands them travelers round here..
Two things 1. What was so bad about Diane Kruger's accent in Inglourious Basterds? and 2. It's hard to pull off an accent that isn't your own, especially convincing one, for even the best actors. So, perhaps the standards should be justifiably lowered for something like this.
It is seriously the only fault in Bram Stokers. I think it is still the best Dracula movie of all time, but damn, we could have gotten a better individual to play Keanu's role.
How is it Stoker's fault? He wrote a book and we imagine the way the characters speak. Keanu Reeves was the one who gave the performance with the sub par accent.
I can't remember how he sounded in that film, too busy rolling on the floor in pain every time Michael Fassbender spoke. If i had ice picks on my i would have shoved them in my ears when fassbender already poor attempt at a different accent was thrown out the window near the end of the movie.
Fassbender did fine. He even speaks it anyway. And at least all the german in that movie was understandable - I am used to the reverse (like in Bones, you can't even understand Emily Deschanel when it's supposed to be german... and that is often the case in other movies as well.)
if he could keep one accent that would be fine, but changing mid movie? I cant deal with that. Plus Ian McKellen plays the older magneto. Couldn't they try to have some coherency in the accents that are chosen. Especially if they are going to throw them in the same movie. maybe i just expect too much from actors. haha, I don't even want to imagine her speaking German.
It is painful watching many Americans attempting any of the British or Irish accents. They always go for the stereotypes which takes away from the authenticity
So many butchered Irish accents. The worst has to be Tom cruise, painful "oh ho ho blarney stone, wheres me lucky charms, fiddly dee potato" that's all I heard for an hour and a half.
