A Quote by Kodi Smit-McPhee

I think when you have to train an accent, it just takes you absolutely into another spectrum of the character. — © Kodi Smit-McPhee
I think when you have to train an accent, it just takes you absolutely into another spectrum of the character.
It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is.
What I try to do with the accent of any character I play is not necessarily to do something that's generic - an Indian accent and that's how it sounds, for example. I think the accent needs to sound authentic on this person.
If you are playing a Hispanic character who has to speak in dialect or in an accent, nail that dialect or accent. When I hear a character that's supposed to be Cuban speaking with a Mexican accent or vice versa, it grates on me and immediately pulls me out of the story.
I love factoids. It's hard for me to keep those out. It just takes realizing that it's stopping the character. Part of it is the decision to keep things where you want to train the spotlight. For me, it's the personal side. I always ask, How does the person inside the character relate to this?
Another train will come. Why rush? Why worry? Why go crazy? Another train will come. And sure enough, another train going my way was pulling into the station. My bad mood evaporated. I entered the car smiling, certain that there would be more missed trains in my life, more closed doors in my face, but there would always be another train rumbling down the tracks in my direction.
I know that's not the right accent, but I can't do the right accent. It's either the wrong accent or another Octomom joke.
I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
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.
Some friends and I, we went right up there behind the studio and we got on a train, we could tell it was going to go to Roseville. We got off it and got on another train. And we got to Roseville, and it takes hours to get through that yard. It's really big. So we ended up just coming back here. It's like fishing or hunting. You can't always come back with something.
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.
At times you've got to be patient, and that's it. I just take it; another good training week, train hard and train strong, look to perform there and hopefully start at the weekend.
I think my attitude's different when I'm in the different places. I don't walk around in character. I try not to walk around with the accent, but those little things change you, whether it's your hair, your clothes, your shoes or a different silhouette. People absolutely look at you differently.
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.
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.
Everybody loves an accent. It you've been unlucky in love, consider pulling up stakes and moving to another country. Then you'll be the one with a neat foreign accent.
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