A Quote by John Oliver
My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler.
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My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.
My natural accent is American. I chose to speak with a U.K. accent when I was about to enter the final year at drama school in London. I was going to try to find a way to stay in the U.K. after I finished college and could not imagine trying to live and get work there with an American accent.
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.
Occasionally, some brother sings very earnestly through his nose, often disturbing those around him, but it does not matter how the voice sounds to the ears of man. What is important is how the heart sounds to the ears of God.
And I remember that about three years before that, her first record had come out. And I just remember really liking this one song off it called "In My Bed" and being a little bit enamored. This, you know, this young kind of Jewish girl from North London, you know, I have the same thing - from a Jewish family from North London - with this incredible voice.
I didn't want to be on screen not nailing an American accent. It's an insult to an American! There are plenty of great American actors who can already do an American accent, so me, coming in and stealing their roles, the one thing I have to perfect is the accent. So for years I practiced. And we're lucky because the whole world is raised on a library of American movies. I would pretend to be Jim Carrey, and, I say Robin Williams now because he's in my mind, but those actors really inspired us to be crazy and be theatrical.
I'm obviously first and foremost a British filmmaker on a global scale, but when it comes to narrowing it down, I really feel like my voice is in the Midlands and outside of London.
I patterned the accent after this guy I was in a play with, but that was three years ago. Now I'm listening to Tony Head (Giles in Buffy), who sounds kind of like Spike in real life. It's much more tough-guy talk in real life. His accent (as Giles) is just as fake as mine. His is nice and gritty, but it's not North London. I'm always afraid that I'm morphing over into Tony Head, wherever he's from.
It's super trippy coming to America because we know everything about it - from music and film. I know what a Southern accent sounds like; I know what a New York accent sounds like.
One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do. It doesn't matter if you're close - it still sounds terrible to their ears.
The great thing about not being American is that you don't assume you know what a Southern accent sounds like, so you have to be specific.
My mom has a very high-pitched voice, and there are some similarities between her and the voice I use on 'Big Bang,' although my mom has the Jersey accent, so I took that out. But the tone of the voice is very similar to my mother's.
I thought I had a pretty good American accent but I had a few sessions with a voice coach over there and she was picking up on a few things. Possibly because I've got such a strong Northern accent, I emphasise the wrong part of words so the idea is to work on my American accent.
Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling.
I was born in New York and moved to London with my family when I was five. I did have an American accent for a couple of months, and then it went a way.
We just need more complex, important roles that tell our experiences as an immigrant; as someone with an accent, but also American; but also someone who's second or third-generation American, born and raised here who actually don't speak any language other than English.
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