A Quote by Nick Nolte

Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.
I'd never gotten to do an accent for anything that I've done, so that was really appealing because I love doing accents. Ever since I was a kid, I made it my business to try to mimic foreign accents, so it was really fun to be able to do that. I was really working on the accent to try to make it really good.
I think people are really picky about English accents. When a Brit comes over here and kind of does an OK American accent, everyone's like, 'You were great! Fantastic!' But in England, even if you were doing a pretty good accent, they're like, 'But where are you from?' 'London.' 'What part of London?' Accents are really precious over there.
When I was younger, I just liked the sound of different accents, and I used to just play around to see if I could do things. I hear accents like music, so that's what helps me to learn them.
Today, actors aren't forced to ditch their regional accents like they used to. The best example's Tom Baker, a Scouser who went to great lengths to change his accent and ended up with something alien - and fantastic. It's sad that when the likes of him go, there won't be those sorts of accents any more.
My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters.
I went through various phases of different accents - I get ridiculously obsessed with different accents, different regional ways of using the voice, different types of singing. It's all tied together. Speaking is a kind of singing, as are crying and laughing.
I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.
I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.
I came to realize,people who had Chinese accents will continue to have Chinese accents in America are treated as being stupid or not as intelligent as an English speaker who is fluent with an American accent - I came to realize why. But it's always fascinated me how quickly you can change where you stand with another human being just based on how you speak.
I wish I could adjust my voice, but it's just what's happened to me. It's because I've lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I've never intentionally changed my accent at all.
I guess the most interesting thing that people think is I'm English. They think that I live in England and have a British accent. When they talk to me, at first they go, "Man, you have a great American accent," and I go, "No, no, no, this is my accent. I don't do accents." And then they're really disappointed, and they try to punch me.
It's a challenge getting rid of an accent by yourself. I have parents that have such thick accents. They are like, "She sounds fine." They didn't know. To them, I spoke perfect English because their accents were so heavy. I don't even want to know what I sounded like. I don't want to know!
Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It's something I noticed with my manager, because he's from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent.
When British or Australian actors perform American characters, we laud them and talk about how great it is they are able to do this other accent that is not their own. Americans have different relationships with other accents.
I do accents. Sometimes when I've had a few drinks, I speak in different accents all night long, and then at the end of an evening someone will say to me, 'Seriously, where are you from?'
Probably. It's a weird thing with accents.When I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.
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