how do actors do it?

[trailergod]

How the hell do some actors get rid of their accents?

Colin Farrell, ever heard him in an interview? Damn that guy has a deep "Irish" accent.... but in his movies he seems to have a completely diff voice... and not in some movies but almost in all of them...

Same with Christian Bale, watch him in American Psycho and then see his interview also on the DVD, and damn, a completely diff accent...lol

But then there are some actors that never can get rid of their accents... Sean Connery or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s

There are also lots of other actors or actresses that are good with faking their voices... care to name a few?

[BuDi]

Arnold said once that accent is his trademark, he can speak fluent american english if he wants.... but moviegoers don't come for that.... they want austrian-american english.

[the_bronz]

Originally posted by BuDi
Arnold said once that accent is his trademark, he can speak fluent american english if he wants.... but moviegoers don't come for that.... they want austrian-american english.

yeah right!

[trailergod]

LOL... yeah right...

when he is here in Germany promoting his movies he only speaks Austrian German...hehehe thats not even "Hoch Deutsch".... which is not the formal FORMAL german...hehehe..

[radstar]

uhhh... i don't know. i'll go ask around

[Kn'thrak]

Simple answer

GO get Lesson to change your accent. Doesn't cost much either. Only a few weeks of learning and you can have any accent or language you want.
My mum is thinking about changing her accent

[Marcus]

Just like how I can fake a really bad english accent, actors can fake an american accent. Only they're good at it, because they're actors. Probably have had some training for it too.

[Wiretrip]

Dialect teachers are what they use. In the movie "the Saint", Val Kilmer studied with a dialect teacher to use on his various guises in the movie.

Jackie Chan could use one though cuz I can't understand the words that are coming out of his mouth. When he hosted SNL they didn't give him too many speaking parts on account of his bad english.

[editman]

Nah... some people can master their tongue, some people can't.

Particularly those who's first language pronounciates very differently from the English language (eg Chinese, Spanish etc) If they speak a lot English at a very young age (before 15 I'll say) they may be able to master their accents. Otherwise their accents stick with them forever.

Thrust me... editmaan kwnows...

[Stormwalker]

i have noticed the same thing too.. however mine is with singers.. when they sing their accents appear to dissapear! ?

[Jake]

Perhaps the people that can imitate accents are the people who listen to different accnets all the time (ex. movie fans) once they can do that they are also likely to pursue a career in movies or acting - that's my explanation for it.

Also the case with Arnold and Sean Connery may be that some countries have harder accents to get rid of than others ex. German has a very distinct sound and so does Scotland - maybe more than other European countries whose languages are less different in sound

[trailergod]

ok, i just saw the big fish trailer and damn .. did i just see or hear Ewan McGregor? ..compare him in Trainspotting and then his accent here... damn actors...lol

http://www.movie-list.com/trailers.php?id=bigfish

[Gaumont]

Well the short answer is that an accent is not something thats built into us. its just the way we pronunce the words. Like what letters we stress, if we go up or down in tone, what letters we do/or dont pronounce at all, how much effort we put into the vowels, how much liprounding we do/or dont, what letters are voiced or not, when to do nasal sounds or not etc etc

Vocabulary and grammar is also important parts of it.

So when learning a new accent you basically learn the diff from your own accent and try and implement them, and the more technical you get the easier will it get as you learn stuff that will cover lots and lots of words and sentenses instead of listening and learnig word by word.

I can almost always hear when it is a swede that speaks english, because there are leftovers from swedish pronounciation. In swedish we articulate every letter usually while in english there are lots of letters thets just left out. So often a swede will read an english word and try and pronunce ever letter, cuz thats how we do it in sweden.

And in chinese, R and L have the same phoneme which is why when they speak english have trouble with the famous "rice" and "lice".

So depending on your first language, it will be easier or harder to hide your first language's speach pattern. And when it comes to switching between diff accents of english, its about learning the rules of the accent and following them.