A Quote by Michael Caine
People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.
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I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.
I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.
I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge, I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my Cockney accent.
I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.
They were looking for boys who could speak with an English accent for the movie 'Lord of the Flies.' I had been abroad enough so I knew that accent.
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.
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 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.
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.
I have trouble sometimes watching actors - even when they do a great job - with an accent. It kind of removes me, somehow. And maybe at some point, yeah, it could be a really cool experience. It's not something that I consciously think, "Oh yeah, I want to do a movie with an accent." Not to say that it couldn't happen.
Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I've been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, 'I'm laughing at your accent.'
I've heard other actors saying they don't want to play a character with an accent at all. To me, that's kind of an insult to somebody like me who did have an 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 lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.
I've been typecast. People don't want to take a risk or a chance. Quite a few times they've come up to me and say "We want you to do that Russian accent." And I'll be like, "How about if I do an Irish accent or a South African accent," and they don't trust that you can properly pull them off.
The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.
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