I went to a dialect coach and she told me that I had five problems; two were my Israeli accent and three were my New Jersey accent. I don't even want to know what I sounded like back then!
I have had people come up to me in the street - one woman actually told me she hated my accent, she can't believe I'm on the telly and my accent is so annoying. I ended up laughing because I thought, 'this person doesn't know me but she felt she could come up and slate my accent.'
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 had a dialect coach to get an American accent, and then another dialect coach to come off it a bit. There is something deep and mysterious in the voice when it isn't too high-pitched American.
It's a challenge getting rid of an accent by yourself. I have parents that have such thick accents. They are like, "She sounds fine." They didn't know. To them, I spoke perfect English because their accents were so heavy. I don't even want to know what I sounded like. I don't want to know!
Working on the accent helped, enormously. I will tell you that when I brought Michael a correct 'British' accent, one that my dialect coach was happy with, he hated it.
The riskiest thing I have done in my fifties is to do a Polish accent for a new film. I had a great time working on it and two wonderful people to guide me. A dialect coach that I have known for thirty years and a Polish actor.
The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.
New Jersey is very big. There are different areas of New Jersey. There is North New Jersey. There is like the center. There are a lot of actors from New Jersey that don't speak with a New Jersey accent.
The Norse way of speaking, no one really knew what the Vikings sounded liked, they were Norsemen. The accent is really a combination of a Scandinavian accent, maybe with a Swedish accent and an old way of speaking.
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.
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 could do an American accent, if I were immersed in the accent, meaning if I were living back in Los Angeles and rehearsing and auditioning the whole time.
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 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.
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.
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.