A Quote by Michael Shannon
That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent.
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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.
I learned how to get rid of the Southern accent when I was, like, 11 years old and living in New York for the summer doing modeling and commercials and auditioning for Broadway. The mother I lived with for the summer taught me how to drop my Southern accent.
When you say, 'Southern,' or you speak about a southern accent, there's always that drawl, and usually from white people. That's what people associate with the South. But we're all different. The black southern accent is different.
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.
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 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.
When I first started out, being from the South and going to New York or Chicago, people kept telling me to get voice lessons and 'lose that stupid accent you got.' And I'm like, 'Well, where I come from, you have the stupid accent.'
My accent fades away I guess when I sing. It's real weird. I guess singing is pretty much a universal language like you sing however everyone else sings and that's with an American accent. I sound very different when I talk.
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'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.
I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before.
I just got back from New York, and I realized in New York, it's very difficult to hear a New York accent. It's almost impossible, actually - everybody seems to speak like they're from the Valley or something. When I grew up, you could tell what street in Dublin someone's from by the way they talked.
I started out in New York, and New York has a way of countering a Southern accent, naturally; when I moved to Los Angeles for a job, and I just stayed, the dialect out here doesn't really counter, and my Southern started coming back.
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'm ready to do some classics. Maybe I wasn't in the beginning. I weighed 179 pounds when I got to New York, and I had that thick Southern accent. I still talk Southern, but I can do without it.
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