A Quote by John Mahoney
People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.
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My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
It's funny because when I'm outside Australia, I never get to do my Australian accent in anything. It's always a Danish accent or an English accent or an American accent.
If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.
I like to think my accent isn't strong enough, but it's funny: I get people coming up to me in America and saying I sound like Mel B. She's from Leeds. They just hear a British accent and probably can't quite work it out.
Because I'm Irish, I've always done an accent. Not doing an accent is off-putting because I sound like me. I love doing an accent. Doing the accent from West Virginia was great, and we had to get specific with it.
Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent.
I felt so out of place at the Miss India pageant. I had just come back from America, and I was told I needed to lose my American accent and learn the Queen's English, so I had to enunciate my vowels and speak well and eloquently. Giving up a New York accent is pretty hard.
I had a 'Monty Python' CD, and I would listen to it in the car on the way to school. It also refined my British accent. I can do a killer British accent because I'm just imitating 'Monty Python.'
Acting for me was hard enough without having to think of the accent. And also, when I was auditioning for stuff I would walk into the room with an Australian accent, and I would do the audition in an American accent, and they would invariably say, 'Yeah, it's that good, but I can still hear the oddity coming through.'
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.
They said [on a day show], oh, you can't do a Chinese accent. That's - and I said, I'm not doing a Chinese accent. I'm doing my friend's accent. And they said, yeah, you can't do that. And I said, OK, but can I do a Russian accent? And they said, yeah, yeah, of course, you can do that. I said, and a British accent? They said, yeah, go ahead. And I couldn't understand.
I speak with a Northern Irish accent with a tinge of New York. My wife has a bit of a Boston accent; my oldest daughter talks with a Denver accent, and my youngest has a true blue Aussie accent. It's complicated.
The Australian accent just a very lovely accent and it doesn't have the pretention maybe of an English accent, but yet seems a little bit more exotic than an American.
I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
With the accent, it's an internal dialogue that Southerners have with themselves. We kind of carry around that shame, that feeling of being inferior to the North. I think I did lose some of the accent for a while. Because when I was a graduate student, I was terrified at having to get up in front of a roomful of smart New York kids.
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