Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Prince John''': And why should the people listen to ''you''?
'''Robin''': Because, unlike [[Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves|some other Robin Hoods]], [[Take That|I can speak with an English accent]].
'''Crowd''': ''(gasps)''|''[[Robin Hood: Men in Tights]]''}}
{{quote|'''[[SF Debris]]''': ...because Captain Picard is French, as you can tell by his British accent.|''[[SF Debris]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s review of "Encounter at Farpoint"}}
When an actor decides not to bother putting on an accent, either because they can't pull it off without [[Narm|sounding silly]] or because they believe it'll hinder their [[Large Ham|ability to act]].
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{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* One commercial for the language learning program Rosetta Stone shows people speaking foreign languages with the proper accent, but also showed a woman speaking Spanish in a very grating American accent.
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** [[Cluster F-Bomb|Jan]] [[Refuge in Audacity|Valentine]] is supposed to speak like a typical English [[Totally Radical|chav]], but he and his brother are both without English accents.
** In Brazil, ''no one'' had a correct accent except one of the more important characters.
* [[Kiniro Mosaic]] has [[Surprisingly Good English]] from Alice as they actually taught her CV English for the role. There's just one small problem: Alice is British but all of Manami Tanaka's instruction was in ''American'' English.
== Film ==
* [[Jean
** In ''[[Time Cop]]'', he still has his accent, but it's noticeably thicker in his character's 1994 self than his 2004 self. It's a nice touch in an otherwise rather mediocre movie. This is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when his wife teases him about his accent/bad english, so it's reasonably justified.
** In [[Universal Soldier]] his character was the son of French immigrants, and his accent is even brought up at one point.
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** In a deleted scene in ''[[Terminator]] 3'', Schwarzenegger has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kayFrIR-Qfw a brief cameo as Master Sergent Candy], the soldier upon which the T-800 model is based. He has a Southern accent, which one of the officers in charge of the program doesn't like, prompting a computer geek with Arnold's real voice to note that they can "fix it."
** In ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', Danny tries to convince Slater (Schwarzenegger) that he's an action movie character by pointing out that he's got a heavy Austrian accent despite ostensibly being a native L.A. cop. Slater's response is, "Eggscent? Vat eggscent?"
** In ''[[Commando (film)|Commando]]'', he [[
** Happens in ''[[Kindergarten Cop]]'' as well. He mentions having grown up in Austria a couple of times. In order to maintain their cover, his partner claims to be his sister and mimics a pseudo Eastern European accent.
** In ''[[Red Heat]]'', he didn't play an American... he played a Russian so it's still an odd accent but many people probably didn't care or notice.
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** Similarly, Wahlberg and [[Matt Damon]] speak with their natural, acceptable Massachusetts accents in ''[[The Departed]],'' while other actors, especially [[Jack Nicholson]], fail miserably. Note that some people still complained that [[Reality Is Unrealistic|Damon's accent]] [[Your Costume Needs Work|was totally unconvincing]].
*** That is not Matt Damon's natural accent. He grew up in Cambridge, not South Boston like his character in the movie did. Which is not to say his accent wasn't good, it's just not his real one.
* John Malkovich in ''[[The Messenger (video game)|The Messenger]]''. It's quite odd hearing the ''king'' of a country speak with a different accent from all his subjects, played mostly by actual Frenchmen.
** John Malkovich also played Talleyrand in A&E's biography ''Napoleon'' without attempting an accent.
** He has a thick French accent in ''[[Johnny English]]''.
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** Neeson again in ''[[K19: The Widowmaker]]'', this time playing a Russian naval officer. Considering the [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|spotty]] Russian accents being attempted by most of his castmates, he probably made the wisest decision.
*** He's said in interviews that he often has a very hard time shedding his accent, and usually needs an accent coach throughout filming. Irish accents are notoriously difficult to shed, and it's rare that he doesn't slip up at least a little.
* ''[[Valkyrie (film)|Valkyrie]]'' is like this. It seems that all Germans speak with British accents
* ''Everyone'' in ''[[Enemy at the Gates]]''. Apparently Russians are Brits and Nazis are Americans (though at least Ed Harris mutes his natural Jersey accent). Made even more jarring by the fact that some of the secondary characters actually ''do'' have proper accents—some of the background Nazis and Sacha's mother.
** To add a layer of irony, the actress playing Sacha's mother - and thus, symbolically, Mother Russia, kind of - is German.
* ''[[The Man in the Iron Mask (1998 film)|The Man in the Iron Mask]]''. Some character sport [[Just a Stupid Accent]] with more or less success, while [[Leonardo DiCaprio]] doesn't seem to even try while playing the ''King of France''. Gerard Depardieu's actual French accent puts the lie to everyone else, though.
* In ''[[300]]'', [[Gerard Butler]] uses his natural Scottish accent for Leonidas and Rodrigo Santoro uses his Brazilian accent for Xerxes. The rest of the Spartans are British-accented (including Australian David Wenham), while the other Persians seem to do a generic foreign accent.
* In ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', all the children used what Charmian Carr called a "Mid-Atlantic" (read: mild British (unless you ARE British, or didn't learn American English first, whereas read 'vaguely American)) accent. Richard Hadyn used his own accent, as did Christopher Plummer (a Canadian) and Julie Andrews (British, of course). Eleanor Parker, an American, adopted a very upper-class East Coast Prep-type accent that sounded vaguely British.
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** Mads Mikkelsen (of ''[[Casino Royale]]'' fame) doesn't bother to cover up his Danish accent, even though he's supposed to be the captain of the guard in Argos.
* The once-lost 1965 film ''[[Incubus]]'' was written and performed entirely in Esperanto. The then-unknown [[William Shatner]] spoke Esperanto with a thick French accent. Which only makes sense at all when you remember he grew up in Quebec.
* ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'' is a bit of a complex example. Laurence Harvey certainly sounds like he's not trying to sound like an American, but on the DVD commentary, director John Frankenheimer said that Harvey was coached to put on an American accent and he thought it was very convincing. He also claimed that he felt Kennedy's Bahston accent would justify any English-ness in Harvey's voice, so I guess he just had a tin ear for accents. Harvey's accent is all the more jarring in that his character is supposed to be an all-American war hero, though it does help emphasize his unlikeable qualities. The other English actor on the project, [[Angela Lansbury]], sounds exactly the same as in any other role. It's especially apparent when Lansbury and Harvey are [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_iBcXCu84w in the same scene].
* Director John Woo often prefers that his actors keep their accents, which can be somewhat distracting; one of his most recent (and jarring) examples is ''[[Red Cliff]]'', where the very Taiwanese Chang Chen played [[Romance of the Three Kingdoms|Sun Quan]].
* ''[[Amadeus]]'' used an American cast using their natural accents so that American audiences wouldn't be distracted by fake German accents or [[The Queen's Latin]]. British audiences disliked the decision, apparently expecting citizens of the Holy Roman Empire to have English accents.
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** Jean-Luc Picard is played by [[Patrick Stewart]], a Brit, even though Picard is from the French countryside. He doesn't seem to modify his accent for the role; on the rare occasions when he [[Foreign Cuss Word|uses French terms]], however, his accent is impeccable. Whenever his relatives appear, they also speak with English accents (or Scottish in the case of his brother) -- except for a vision he has of his mother in the first season, who speaks with a French accent.
** Commander Worf was raised (and presumably, taught English) by a heavily-accented Belarusian couple, yet has a pretty vanilla American accent. Possibly justified if he grew up in America, as children adopt the accent of their native country and not of their parents.
*** Worf apparently spent a fair portion of his (among humans) youth on a colony world. Since his human brother also doesn't share his parents' accent, it's probably safe to assume that the colony was not primarily Belarusian. Though it's also probably safe to assume that Worf's accent is ''Klingon'' and that its resemblance to a generic American accent is coincidental (easy to get away with that sort of thing in sci-fi, after all). The show actually does provide some support for this, though... while all Klingons have "American" accents, Gowron (a born and bred nobleman and politician) uses a softer, more fluid way of speaking than Worf, while Martok (a commoner) uses an even deeper and more bombastic way of speaking, leaving Worf's clipped, deep tones a sort of "middle of the road" among Klingon accents.
* Memorably [[Averted]] in ''[[Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy]]'' when Stewart plays KGB mastermind Karla. {{spoiler|He doesn't speak. At all.}}
* Something of a subversion occurs in the extremely short-lived British sitcom ''[[wikipedia:Heil Honey I'm Homechr(21)|Heil Honey I'm Home!]]'', which features Hitler living next door to an annoying Jewish couple and pretends to be a long-lost American TV show. Hitler speaks with an American accent, as does everyone else, except for Neville Chamberlain.
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** This is the standard ''Mitchell and Webb'' procedure: Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Abraham, God, St Mark, American government officials, the Chancellor of the Great Galactic Endeavour of Vectron, the SS, and Christopher Columbus were all apparently from Wiltshire.
* Colin Hanks on ''[[The Good Guys]]'', Colin Hanks plays Texan police detective Jack Bailey. He still sounds straight out of California. Granted, he plays a character who is supposed to seem kind of out of place in Texas. Diana-Maria Riva also uses a midwestern accent (she is an Ohio native in real life), but also seems out of place in Dallas.
== Music ==
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== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Resident Evil]]: Umbrella Chronicles'', Carlos speaks with a strangely generic American voice, despite the fact that he's supposed to come from South America. It sounds even odder when he calls Jill "chica" in his American voice.
** Same with the second act of ''[[Resident Evil 3: Nemesis]]''.
** Jessica from ''Revelations'' also has an American accent, despite being European.
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', all of the "Russian" characters, with the exception of Granin and Nikita Kruschev, speak with flawless American accents, except for Sokolov, who speaks with ''Belgian'' accent. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when Sokolov remarks that Snake has "excellent Russian". The player is meant to assume that [[Translation Convention|we're hearing Russian translated into American English/Japanese/whatever]] (although it was originally intended that Snake and Sokolov actually speak Russian).
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** [[Evil Brit|Liquid]] is shown in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' to have a stereotypical English accent, [[Fake Brit|with occasional slips]]. In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'', his new VA plays him with an American accent. {{spoiler|[[The Reveal]] is that he's only Ocelot pretending to be Liquid, which makes this something of an [[In-Universe]] example as well}}.
** Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker had Paz, when {{spoiler|unveiling her true colors}}, speaking with a distinctly Russian accent, despite the briefing tapes implying that {{spoiler|she was raised in America, and the only foreign race she was descended from was Latino}}. Similarly, Cat Taber gave Cecile Cosima Caminades a pretty terrible French accent.
** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops|Portable Ops]]'', practically everyone has an American accent, including characters with non-American voice actors (most of the enemies are Soviets), although {{spoiler|Sokolov}} is an exception.
* In ''[[Fallout 3]]'', [[Malcolm McDowell]] portrays President John Henry Eden, who claims to have been brought up in rural Kentucky. At times, he seems to be trying to fake some sort of American accent, but most of the time he sounds like, well, Malcolm McDowell. Also, the player character's father, voiced by [[Liam Neeson]] (who, as has been remarked upon elsewhere, doesn't really do accents).
** Of course, the President Eden example might be justified: {{spoiler|he's a computer program, and the John Henry Eden personality is essentially created to be appealing as a leader. Americans like a leader who's a "humble man of the people", thus the claims of being raised in rural Kentucky, but we also want an intelligent leader, and we associate English accents with high class and intelligence. Eden and his creators are presumably counting on the inhabitants of the post-apocalyptic America to be too desperate for leadership and normalcy to care about trying to reconcile the contradictions.}}
* ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' takes place in post-apocalyptic [[Ruritania|Eastern Europe]], but only three characters have an accent that isn't North American, and two of them are British.
** [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that it is mentioned the Combine frequently relocate people around the world.
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* Characters such as Lancer and Saber in the English dub of ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' are noticeably lacking the accents an English-speaking audience would expect, given their countries of origin. Of course, this is doubly justified: the Irish and British accents of Cú Chulainn or {{spoiler|King Arthur}}'s time would be completely different from modern ones, and the dub was already bad enough without poorly faked accents.
* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'': nearly all of the [[The Crusades|Crusades-era]] characters have vaguely Middle Eastern accents except for the main character, Altaïr, who speaks as American as apple pie (since he is actually his descendant reliving his [[Genetic Memories]]). Lucy, the technician working on the Animus, says that she can restore all the accents and write it as Old English, but she doesn't because it would be like reading [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]].
** The [[Assassin's Creed: Revelations]] version of Altaïr does speak with a middle eastern accent. This could be due to the Animus 2.0
** The sequels, which take place in Renaissance Italy, feature plenty of accents, as well as [[Gratuitous Italian]]. Except everybody speaks with the same generic accent and the same dialect, no matter which part of Italy they're from. This is also the result of the Animus 2.0 making some adjustments to memories.
* Parodied in ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'' with the movie "Dragon Brain" set in medieval times which features "...a humble blacksmith, with a California accent".
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* In the English dub of ''[[Street Fighter]] IV'' and ''Super Street Fighter IV'', only the European characters (Cammy, Vega, Rose, Abel and Zangief), El Fuerte (Mexican) and Dee Jay (Jamaican) have accents that aren't American. Most of them are accurate except Abel, who [[Just a Stupid Accent|can't decide what accent he has]].
* In the first two ''[[Rainbow Six]]'' games, the player characters, regardless of nationality, all have American accents.
** In ''Vegas'' and the sequel enemies are supposed to be Mexican gang members who [[Poirot Speak|throw Spanish words into their speech]]. Despite this the Canadian made voice acting doesn't even bother hiding their natural accents.
* Tomi Undergallows in ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' comes from a place named Calimshan, which had a Vizier named Sabbalan Vihayed. So how does he talk? With an appalling accent that has exactly zero points of similarity with the accent of anyone from the Middle East. (It bears a few similarities to bad Cockney, and saying that is an insult to bad Cockney)
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|Ferelden and Tevinter Humans generally have English (sounding) accents]], but it's by no means consistent. Notably, both Wynne and Flemeth have American/Canadian accents. {{spoiler|Flemeth may be from the fade or just from another, long extinct society given that she might be hundreds of years old. Wynne had an American accent long before she encountered a fade spirit of her own.}}
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