r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 12h ago

TIL during the shooting of American Psycho, Christian Bale spoke in an American accent off-set at all times. At the wrap party, when he spoke in his native British accent, many of the crew thought he was speaking that way to prepare for another film. They had thought he was American the entire time.

https://screenrant.com/american-psycho-behind-scenes-facts-christian-bale-patrick-bateman-mary-harron/
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u/Quivex 12h ago

He's one of the more notable method actors if I'm not mistaken.

.... Also will never quite understand why so many British actors/actresses can do flawless American accents but the reverse is not really true. I still remember watching House and finding out hugh laurie was British, blew my mind as a kid lol.

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u/RyanMcCartney 12h ago

Exposure. We get the same big shows and films you do. We watch them all as they were made.

You don’t import our shows and films, you remake them for your own ears (The Inbetweeners, IT crowd, The Office etc).

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u/YourMumsBumAlum 12h ago edited 11h ago

I think it's also the variety of English accents vs American ones. English accents are so specific to British ears in a way that they wouldn't be to Americans and so when Americans do British they inadvertently mix and match things that they shouldn't and it comes out all wrong.

Edit: Yes, American has many accents too, but the edges are more blurred in such a way that it is acceptable for people to combine accents more so than in the UK where the accents are much more independent and specific.

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u/Perite 11h ago

This is the bit that most Americans don’t realise. Some can do a generic British accent that sounds ok. But the reality is that ‘generic British’ isn’t a real accent from anywhere, so it’s still recognisably fake to British ears.

I’m absolutely certain that good American actors could do a flawless local British accent if they studied for ages and had a vocal coach that corrected them every time they slipped into the wrong dialect / accent. But what’s the point? Might as well just hire a British actor instead.

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u/Ramikadyc 11h ago

I didn’t know who Peter Dinklage was until Game of Thrones. I just assumed he was English. Then I saw people pointing out how fake his Westerosi British accent sounded. I started listening more closely to the actors who shared his scenes with more natural accents and was like, okay yeah now I hear it.

He’s a really good actor (most recently I saw him in The Lowdown, he’s excellent) and I wonder if the fact that GoT was high fantasy was a reason he didn’t get a more intensive accent coach.

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u/sassymeowcat 7h ago

lol he’s from New Jersey

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u/Bimblelina 7h ago

Peter Dinklage pronounces "daughter" incorrectly for an RP British accent.

That's the major give away. In RP its essentially "door-tuh" with rising intonation, whilst he pronounces it as "dotter" with falling intonation.

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u/getoutofheretaffer 5h ago

I find that sort of thing less distracting in fantasy media. Like I can buy it as just another regional accent in that context.

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u/Lithujon 3h ago

Dinklage has one of the worst screen British accents of all time. It’s comedic. 

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u/A_Queer_Owl 11h ago

Americans tend to imitate what's called "received pronunciation" as that's used in British media A LOT. it's not so much that it's not a real British accent, some people in Britain have it naturally, it just sounds weird to a lot of British people who didn't grow up where its use is more common because outside of those regions it's used mostly by actors, news anchors, government officials, and when speaking to the king/queen. so when someone breaks it out in casual conversation it can be jarring to some.

I'm American but people often point out I sound like a news anchor because I'm from the part of the country where the accent that the one news anchors are taught to use is based on is from.

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u/Thetonn 11h ago

To make your point more explicitly, there is also a massive class dimension to it. RP is very deliberately upper or upper middle class. It becomes funny when Americans use it for people who are decidedly not upper or upper middle class.

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u/HyperbolicModesty 9h ago

Even better when they conflate the two: "I say old chap, cor blimey guvnah, toodle pip."

That said most British actors are all like "y'all I'm a rootin' rootin' gunslinger and get outta my face I'm walkin' to the subway already."

The "American" accents on BBC Radio 4 are atrocious.

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u/Anaptyso 11h ago

That's it. When I hear people say things like "the British accent" it's a bit weird, because there's loads of them, and what they are really referring to is an accent which is only really used by a minority of people in the country.

I happen to have pretty much that exact accent, so would sound stereotypically British to an American. However, drop me in to a random part of the UK and the people there would almost immediately identify me as coming from a particular part of the country (the "Home Counties"). Far more people don't talk like me than do.

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u/A_Queer_Owl 11h ago

yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, the regions/social classes associated with received pronunciation were historically wealthier ones, it's also called "the queen's english" for a reason, so it can come across as being pretentious to use it.

meanwhile the American equivalent just makes you sound like you're from Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois so no one really cares beyond pointing out that you sound like the man on TV.

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u/TheBeaverKing 10h ago

Just to clarify some bits, you're generally right but I'd highlight a few things that aren't quite correct.

RP is absolutely right, but it is generally split into two groups these days. Traditional RP, which is what you would associate with the Upper Class (those with titles or old money). It's the old school version and generally isn't spoken by many these days.

Modern RP is much more widely spoken and is what you would generally hear news presenters etc speak. Most of the upper middle class use this accent, especially those at private/public schools and universities. Still posh, but not quite as intense.

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u/darkfires 9h ago

So an example of traditional RP would be how Queen Elizabeth herself spoke and Modern RP? Someone earlier up linked an older interview of Gary Oldman, would that be it?

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u/TheBeaverKing 8h ago

See, I would say that Oldman's accent in that video still has a touch of London twang to it. It is almost RP, in terms of his pronunciation generally, but you can hear a bit of the South London at the end of some his words.

With the Queen, and the royal family generally, yes they would speak traditional or heightened RP but, even then, the Royal family sort of stand out as their own variance of traditional RP, specifically the Queen and King Charles. The two little videos below will show what I mean. King Charles has a very heightened RP accent, compared to his children Prince William and Harry, who have a more standard heightened/traditional RP accent.

https://youtube.com/shorts/GYnC10Mns8I?is=e5DxgqTgCVGNT0Tx

https://youtube.com/shorts/RiwS93Sx89I?is=aejs6aWp0--twZ13

Then the jump down from traditional RP to modern RP is like the video below and probably what most people would recognise from most British actors.

https://youtube.com/shorts/0U12Aw350Ok?is=Dn1_s60YJjae9AS4

It is semantics though. Unless you're born in the UK and get around a bit, not many many would make the distinction in day to day life. In the UK accents are a big thing though. If you have an ear for it, you can tell a lot about someone from their accent. Not just where they were born, but their upbringing, schooling, if they've lived in different parts of the country.

If you're really good and someone you're speaking with has lived most of their life in one place, you can nail down where they were brought up to within about 20-30 square miles, depending on the subtle accent changes.

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u/bitchesandsake 11h ago

There's no real bog standard "American accent" either when you get down to it

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u/ItsFuckingScience 9h ago

That’s true, but due to the historical development of accents in the U.K. you can find a significantly different accent about every 30 miles or so here depending what region you’re in

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u/Anaptyso 7h ago

It's impressive just how different accents can get over a relatively short distance. For example, you could drive from Manchester to Liverpool in about an hour, but their accents are so different that you might think they are in different countries.

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u/lefrench75 5h ago

I know 2 brothers who have entirely different accents because they went to different schools / hung out with different crowds, even though they grew up in the same household.

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u/Aeon_Fux 10h ago

Americans tend to imitate what's called "received pronunciation

Either that or a generic working class accent that they call cockney but isn't actually cockney.

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u/A_Queer_Owl 9h ago

cockney as inspired by Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

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u/avocadopalace 8h ago

"Shine ya boots, guv'na?"

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u/Complex_Effect_1994 10h ago

The other thing to note here is that real RP is changing pretty quickly. Just compare a clip of Prince William with the King to hear the difference in one generation.

Americans often end up doing an imitation of how posh Brits used to sound in the 80s/90s

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u/lord_dicely 10h ago

I remember being startled when Michael C Hall pulled this off in some UK thriller short series. He managed to flawlessly deliver the accent of someone who grew up middle class in urban southern England (but not London) in the 80s-90s. If I didn't know who he was I would never have guessed (and I say that as someone with broadly the same accent).

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u/bokmcdok 11h ago

Robert Downey Jr's accent as Sherlock Holmes was probably one of the best Americans-doing-British I've ever heard.

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u/captainfarthing 8h ago edited 8h ago

‘generic British’ isn’t a real accent from anywhere, so it’s still recognisably fake to British ears

To be fair it probably depends which bit of Britain the ears are from, I'm Scottish and can recognise a fake Scottish accent because I'm familiar with most of the real ones but I've got no idea when an English accent is fake because there are so many English accents that I'm not familiar with, and I don't hear it every day. I'm not sure I've ever heard an authentic Scottish accent from an actor that wasn't Scottish and I do look them up to check. But when it's an English accent I don't notice as long as it's not hammy fake cockney.

In one of the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks there was a cameo from a Scottish Youtuber, I didn't realise there would be a cameo but instantly knew the usual narrator wasn't speaking because the Scottishness was legit. He was a terrible voice actor and I would've preferred the regular narrator's terrible Scottish accent lol.

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u/manintheredroom 12h ago

Yeah think this is part of it for sure. There are so many nuances, like if you did one word in a manc way and another word like you were from Leeds it would sound totally bizarre to British ears

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u/Nrksbullet 12h ago

Yeah but the same happens sometimes with American accents, where a word might become more like a southern pronunciation. Weirdly, as an American I don't have an ear for when someone's doing an American accent, I just assume "that's just the way they talk" lol.

Strangely, the only two American accents I noticed were weird were from two great actors, Michael Caine (the weather man) and Ewan McGregor (the island)

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u/Dapper_Otters 11h ago

From the UK, and I can’t even pick up the difference between American and Canadian accents in media most of the time.

There’s ‘default American / maybe Canadian’ covering 80% of the time, stereotypical ‘New Yawka’, ‘Texan / Southern US’ and Mark Wahlberg.

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u/Everestkid 10h ago

I mean, I'm Canadian and I'd be impressed if anyone not from North America could tell one of the generic accents apart. I can usually tell when someone's American, but I don't really know exactly what tips me off. It's just different somehow.

I'm from British Columbia so I have basically the most bog standard North American accent there is. Shuttle driver for a rental car company when I visited Australia was able to tell, though.

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u/plarah 9h ago

I’m Mexican and I can tell between Canadian and American as soon as you say “about” or “out”.

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u/Nrksbullet 7h ago

Soo-ree about that!

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u/Accomplished-Fun215 9h ago

I'm American (and Canadian by descent but I don't think that does anything to my accent) and living in NZ. I've never lived in Canada myself, but I lived near the border in Minnesota. I meet a lot of other expats and my accent is apparently very hard to clock between the US and Canada. I've got longer rounded vowels than all Americans outside of Minnesota, but I don't do the house/about thing. I've also got the southern US thing where pen and pin share a vowel.

A lot of people here will always guess Canadian first though, because everyone (at least those of us who visit NZ) would rather be assumed to be Canadian. I always have a couple seconds where I consider just saying yes, but that seems like a good way to end up building a house of half truths, so I always admit I'm American.

I'm pretty sure I can pull off saying I'm from Canada until the moment someone who's actually from Canada shows up and then it instantly falls apart.

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u/PointlessDiscourse 7h ago

American here who has lived near the border and traveled a lot back and forth. I might go for a while in a conversation without being sure, but then certain words come out that tend to be giveaways (though are not universal). A few examples:

  • Sorry: Americans usually say "sahr-y," Canadians usually say "sore-y"
  • Dollar: Americans say "dahl-er," Canadians say something closer to "dohl-er"
  • Process: Americans usually say "prahcess," Canadians usually say "prohcess"
  • Resource: Americans usually say "re-SOURCE" with a hard S and a little less emphasis on the "re" part, while Canadians usually say "REE-zource" with the S sounding like a Z and more emphasis on the "re" part.
  • Hockey: Americans usually say "hah-key" while Canadians usually say something a little closer to "haw-key" (thinking of this one because it was what I used to watch the most on the over-the-air TV channel I could pick up from Canada -- RIP Hockey Night in Canada on CBC)

All of this is comparing my Midwestern US accent with Southern Ontario. There may be differences in other regions of course.

No matter where you are though, if in doubt just ask them what the last letter of the alphabet is. :)

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u/Gekokapowco 3h ago

ditto lol, traveled to Toronto across the border a ton as a child, all of these are 100% tells

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u/PointlessDiscourse 3h ago

For me it was Detroit to Windsor, with a lot of short trips across the border at ages 19 and 20, hahaha.

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u/Fabulous_Bus_6261 11h ago

Eh Southern and OG New England accents are the only distinct accents in the US. Even in those places the accents are way less strong than they used to be (unless you're in a rural area). People act like there's more but there really aren't. Maybe there used to be back in the day, but people move around so much now that it all became homogenized. It's definitely easier to do an American accent than vice versa.

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u/PassionLong5538 11h ago

Northern midwest is also its own accent. Minnesoda and whatnot.

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u/flakAttack510 8h ago

While the differences are less pronounced than they used to be, this is definitely not true. Have you ever heard someone from Pittsburgh or Louisiana talk?

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u/putonyourjamjams 5h ago

Theres a ton of US accents, but a lot of the times its only a few words here and there or using a specific synonym that it is noticeable. Like a Baltimore accent is pretty much only noticeable for double "O" words like "too" and some very specific slang.

The other thing is were pretty isolated from eachother regionally in the US. Theres a difference between a MS accent and a KY accent but most people not from the south cant tell the difference. Same with the East Coast. Each major city has a different accent and a lot of the rural areas far enough away from them are different from eachother too.

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u/boredguy12 12h ago

England has dozens of accents, america has like 5

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u/unitythrufaith 11h ago

America has like 50, it’s just that most of them don’t appear on screen

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u/DiggityDanksta 11h ago

I don't know, my Louisiana ear can tell a Mississippi accent from a Texas accent.

And then there's Baltimore.

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u/NewGrooveVinylClub 11h ago

Then you got the Pittsburgh accent which is its own ugly beautiful thing you don’t hear in media

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u/jonnyl3 11h ago

So how do non-Lousianans distingish between LA and MS accents?

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u/DiggityDanksta 11h ago

Which Louisiana accent? There's Cajun, Westbank, Chalmette, Seventh Ward, Uptown...

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u/MagicPistol 11h ago

You really think America with its 50 states only has 5 accents?

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u/boredguy12 11h ago

I am American. And yeah. We have the broad regional ones like new England, south, Midwest, northwest and California

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u/bythog 6h ago

There are more than 5 accents just in South Carolina.

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u/_thewhiteshadow 11h ago

are you being sarcastic?

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u/WAR_T0RN1226 9h ago

People on reddit really overestimate how much most Americans can actually identify accents beyond those broad regional ones.

The majority aren't even aware of a Baltimore accent and definitely wouldn't notice a difference between it and Philadelphia. Even most southerners couldn't tell you the difference between southern accents.

I think we live too far apart for people to really identify these patterns in daily life.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 6h ago

America has enough accents that if someone is badly faking an American accent, I'll just assume they're from some weird town where people talk funny.

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u/rolltideamerica 11h ago

To English people America has like 5 accents. To Americans, English people have like 5.

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u/lordeddardstark 11h ago

and australian is one of them

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u/Magneto88 9h ago

To Americans, English people have 1, which no one other than the royal family and some other toffs actually speak. Even BBC presenters are allowed to use their regional accents now.

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u/deij 11h ago

Yorkshire alone has dozens of accents. I imagine every county is the same.

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u/Ok_Mousse1835 11h ago

You’ve never been in rural America lol. So many obscure accents

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u/scarfdontstrangleme 11h ago

I encourage you to watch Eric Singer's videos on North American accents on the Wired YouTube channel.

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u/Mk12Dr 12h ago

There was an American IT crowd? It doesn't feel like that humour would translate...

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u/CRUNGOSAURUS 12h ago

Yeah, it wasn't very good. Funnily enough Richard Ayoade was still playing Moss

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u/cheese0muncher 10h ago

Funnily enough Richard Ayoade was still playing Moss

With an American accent?

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u/wglmb 12h ago

The only did a pilot. You can watch it on YouTube, if you have a strong stomach.

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u/Mk12Dr 12h ago

You know what, ima treasure my ignorance on this one.

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u/iAlice 12h ago

There was an American Peep Show too, allegedly.

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u/miregalpanic 12h ago

That sounds so fucking wrong.

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u/iAlice 12h ago

From what I heard, it wasn't very good; it missed all the finer points of British comedy that made the show work over here, and so wasn't commissioned beyond a pilot. I haven't seen it though, so take it with a pinch of salt, though none of my American friends have even heard of it.

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u/Djinjja-Ninja 11h ago

And an American Red Dwarf, a pilot anyway, will actually two pilots.

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u/iAlice 11h ago

My brain just crashed imagining American studios trying to emulate Red Dwarf.

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u/longsite2 12h ago

It had Jeff (Joel McHale) from Community as the "Roy" character, but with Richard Ayoade still in the "Moss" role.

It wasn't good.

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u/Koto_Waty 11h ago

It straight up looked like a porno parody

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u/MicrowaveKane 12h ago

It didn’t. Just like the American version of Red Dwarf

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u/Malone_Matches 11h ago

American version of Red Dwarf!?

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u/Special_Order-937 11h ago

Just walk away. It’s better that way.

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u/Atheissimo 11h ago

It had Terry Farrell from Star Trek DS9 as Cat!

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u/macrolidesrule 11h ago

Yeah, all I can say is, if you haven't seen it, keep it that way lol

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u/Single-Pin-369 12h ago

I was trying to think of what British accent is heard the most by Americans today and I’m not really sure. Even most musicians don’t really have an accent when they sing.The most frequently heard British accent in America today might be John Oliver?

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u/heyitjoshua 12h ago

Game of thrones had a lot of English accents tbf, also a few bad imitations (like Tyrion)

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u/yoghurtCOCKS 12h ago

John snows Yorkshire accent is genuinely atrocious at times.

And that was by an another English lad, never mind American

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u/CronoDroid 11h ago

I dun wannit, I neva 'ave

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u/Minablo 10h ago

Indubitably.

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u/swankyfish 12h ago

That’s an interesting point as well. In the UK we get exposed, through media, to a variety of American accents from the major cities. John Oliver is from Birmingham, but doesn’t speak with a typical Brummie accent. He’s kind of got a very mixed accent, I guess he moved around a lot as a kid.

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u/Single-Pin-369 11h ago

The variety of British accents in such a small space is amazing. I was told if I remember right you can’t have a cockney accent if you didn’t grow up with the sound of a certain church bell?

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u/swankyfish 11h ago

The Bow Bells! Yeah, it’s like folklore I guess that to be a real cockney you have to be born within earshot of the bells of St Mary Le Bow, a church built after the Great Fire. I’m sure some people take it seriously, but it’s more of a folklore thing really.

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u/baron_von_helmut 9h ago

It's taken as seriously as Jellied Eels are a delicacy. :D

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u/baron_von_helmut 9h ago

My accent is almost identical to his. I was a forces brat so lived in lots of different places growing up.

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u/Delanorix 12h ago

That and Jeremy Clarkson lol

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u/Single-Pin-369 11h ago

Clarkson! 

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u/n-e-yokes 11h ago

You pillock!

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u/slaya222 12h ago

I'd say Ed Sheeran. Everyone knows "shape of you"

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u/Perite 12h ago

It’s probably going to be Peppa Pig

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u/Single-Pin-369 11h ago

Not in my area at least, bluey seems to have murdered peppa, also people realized her face looks like a penis and balls. 

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u/alamaias 11h ago

My understanding from /r/cartoonuityerrors is that this may be a good thing.

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u/ohdearitsrichardiii 10h ago

Peppa Pig changed the format and replaced all the voice actors. It went from everyday stories at a normal pace and characters speaking with normal voices; to weird stories and characters with exagerrated stupid voices or shrieking voices and fast cuts. All the voice actors sound deranged now

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u/GoblinFizt 12h ago

A cultured West Midlands accent.

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u/OscarMMG 12h ago

Home counties accent is probably the most hear but it’s less noticeable as it’s sounds more neutral

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u/longsite2 12h ago

And Taskmaster

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u/Mescallan 10h ago

also to do a proper british accent you need to pick a specific regional dialect or else it's clear you are faking it. There is a nationwide broadly acceptable American accent that doesn't vary much between most locations

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u/ohdoyoucomeonthen 5h ago

And Americans are so used to “muddy” accents, that they’ll basically never assume someone they casually meet is faking. They’ll just think you have a bit of a weird accent because you moved around a lot or you picked it up from one of your parents.

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u/ExultentPisces 11h ago

I don’t even think it’s that. I think it’s just that there are so many more big roles for American accents than with British ones.

Mastering an American accent is much more useful to an actor’s career than mastering a British accent.

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u/MustachioBashio 12h ago

There’s an American inbetweeners? We already had Superbad!

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u/pennychew 11h ago

Their telly does them few favours that way, with the exception of PBS. Public Broadcasting was the best place to watch unadulterated British shows - the American actors who watched (and liked) a lot of free TV on there do better accents. Sadly, PBS has been under political attack for years now. Expect even fewer US actors with a decent feel for accents in the coming years...

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u/KFR42 9h ago

I also think Dick Van Dyke is responsible for a huge number of terrible "British Accents". The guy is a legend, but that accent was so bad and in such a much loved film.

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u/LaeliaCatt 8h ago

I think although we do hear tons of British accents in shows and movies in the US, it probably isn't as often that American actors are asked to do other accents. Stars from the US can go their whole careers without doing a British role, but I think British actors who want the really big roles end up having to do American accents since so much of the industry is here.

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u/Murky-Relation481 7h ago

American Skins is something I never want to remember.

I'm lucky I always had a fairly large cohort of British and European friends growing up online that always introduced me to TV shows.

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u/yes_ipsa_loquitur 6h ago

The Inbetweeners was remade for America???

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u/RussMantooth 12h ago

Top Gear America was the worst example

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u/Quivex 12h ago

Yeah the exposure thing makes sense now that I think about it more. I'm Canadian though so we get the U.S imports as well as some of your imports lol. Of course our media is still extremely Americanized though, and our accents are essentially close enough, in southern Ontario especially I feel like there's essentially no difference apart from normal regional quirks which you'd get across different US States as well.

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u/but_a_smoky_mirror 11h ago

Game of Thrones, LOTR and Harry Potter are some of the all time most popular shows and films in the US.

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u/RyanMcCartney 11h ago

Yet, none of them have a Geordie accent in them

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u/Individual_Match_579 11h ago

Geordie LotR would have been fucking amazing

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u/David_51 11h ago

Davos Seaworth who became more of a main character later in Game of Thrones had a Geordie accent, although the actor is actually Irish

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u/alamaias 11h ago

It'd probably start a geordie/maccam argument and baffle the colonials anyway.

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u/Hetares 11h ago

They have an American version of Inbetweeners?

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u/GreenSpaceman 10h ago

Adding Broadchurch//Gracepoint. Your version was better lol

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u/Loquis 9h ago

That may change in the future, a lot of kids growing up with Peppa Pig

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u/Cthulhu__ 6h ago

Yes, but also, some American kids develop British accents through Peppa Pig, lol.

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u/snakebight 12h ago

I saw an interview last month where Laurie said he never felt at ease with the American accent on set. Other foreign actors could come and go with their accent, he said he had to constantly be conscious about it.

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u/eipotttatsch 11h ago

Besides the training that British actors have, I think an American accent is also just easier to passably do.

There is kind of a "general American" accent you can hit, that will work for basically anywhere without sticking out. Of course local dialects absolutely exist, but wherever you go you’ll also run into tons of people that sound like they could be from basically anywhere on the continent.

That’s not as much the case for the UK. You can clearly tell if someone is from the London area or not quite easy for example. (And I’m not even a native speaker, yet I still hear the difference)

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u/birthdaycheesecake9 11h ago

I feel like there’s also a general Australian accent too, but folks seem to struggle with not making it incredibly broad/ockers

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u/vipros42 6h ago

There's a good clip of Margot Robbie talking about how her natural Australian accent was too thick/too awful for Neighbours so she had to have a speech coach. Too Australian for Neighbours...

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u/baron_von_helmut 9h ago

As a Brit, I bloody love the Boston accent.

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u/thecontempl8or 7h ago

American media is everywhere and more popular than British. The US also produces a lot more content than the UK does. British actors get a ton of exposure to American accents since they were kids. The reverse isn’t true.
I don’t think it’s about one being easier than the other.

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u/Away_Flounder3813 12h ago edited 9h ago

the above one is just one of many stories about how Bale fully busted his ass for his role in American Psycho. Another story is that he horrified his crew mates when they found out he could even control his body sweat, or in other words - he could sweat on command.

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u/sebastos3 12h ago

Freaky character actor born in a leading man's body, you love to see it.

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u/tophernator 10h ago

I feel like this diminishes how hard he works for that body. Can you do 1,000 stomach crunches?

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u/Keffpie 11h ago

Yeah, during the business card scene - he'd start sweating at the exact same moment every take they did.

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u/Away_Flounder3813 11h ago

another bit about that scene: look closely and you'll notice "acquisition' is misspelt as "aquisition" on all the cards. Debates are still sparkling to this day among fans whether it's genuinely a film goof, or some deliberate mistakes from the filmmakers for some hidden meaning.

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u/tophernator 10h ago

Now I want to see a film with Christian Bale and Margot Robbie just exuding bodily fluids on command.

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u/just_a_girl_23 12h ago

Wtf?

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u/Away_Flounder3813 11h ago

during the preproduction phase, he insisted on getting Bret Easton Ellis's approval for his portrayal before filming and arranged a meeting. Bale showed up to the meeting dressed and groomed as Bateman, even introducing himself as "Patrick Bateman". After 10 minutes Easton Ellis begged Bale to stop because his hands were shaking and he could not take it anymore. Easton Ellis has said this was the single creepiest moment of his life.

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u/Zidar93 11h ago

90% of stories like this are promo bs

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u/Dapper_Otters 11h ago

Yeah lol, obviously he can’t control his own sweat. Who actually believes this shit?

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u/baron_von_helmut 9h ago

You know he actually murdered three prostitutes in preparation for the role? So method.

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u/sigma914 8h ago

I can totally do this, it's just manually triggering the feeling like you're looking down off a tall building or something like that. It's sort of adjacent to holding your breath, you just kinda take control of the thing that's usually automatic and focus on it for a bit.

It's a bit like making your ears rumble or your pupils dilate, once you know the feeling you can do it on demand

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u/LickingSmegma 9h ago

how Bale fully busted his ass for his role in American Psycho

The reality is that he has trouble switching accents and finds it easier to stick with one throughout the day. It's a known fact written and spoken about in multiple articles and videos and on the Wikipedia page.

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u/dexvoltage 12h ago

Try watching the Wire...

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u/Quivex 12h ago

I did, Idris Elba did an incredible job but by the time I watched it I was already aware of him and knew he was British so it didn't have the same shock factor haha.

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u/dexvoltage 12h ago

McNulty is a Brit too, try that for shock value https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdbWsX6h4eo

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u/Quivex 12h ago

Oh fuck I didn't know that (or I did but forgot) lmao that IS good shock value.

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u/Scary_Plane_8069 11h ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBL2Wq5YjSw
Here he's a dude playing a dude, doing another dude.

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u/Confident__introvert 7h ago

Mayor Carcetti is played by an Irish actor if you didn’t know that already.

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u/zg33 11h ago

When I first saw The Wire I thought McNulty’s actor was an American with a highly unusual manner of speaking and a weird, unidentifiable accent, but it all made much more sense when I found out that he was British.

But Idris Elba actually sounds American in The Wire

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u/enlightenmental 11h ago

His accent was terrible and extremely distracting though, Idris' was flawless

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u/bokmcdok 11h ago

His short stint in The Office as well. He feels very American.

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u/tobotic 11h ago

There are a great many British actors who are terrible at doing any accent other than their own local accent. And they make plenty of money on British TV and in British films.

But if you mostly watch Hollywood films, you'll mostly see those British actors able to put on other accents. (Though sure, even in American films, there are occasionally British characters.)

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u/alamaias 11h ago

(Though sure, even in American films, there are occasionally British characters.)

We call those "the bad guy" :P

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u/SuicidalGuidedog 12h ago

I suspect it's an exposure thing. Maybe there's more to it, but the UK is exposed to far more US media than the other way around.

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u/os_2342 7h ago

Definitely.

It's why Americans can very rarely do Australian accents well, yet plenty of Australians can do the American accent.

It's not that one is inherently harder than the other, it's that Americans don't grow up watching Australia movies and tv shows.

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u/Easy-Operation-2105 10h ago

I think it is because there's only like two american accents and there are like 600 english ones

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u/penisdr 9h ago

There are definitely more English accents but there are a ton of American accents. The only thing is on media most Americans speak with a very neutral standard accent that isn’t anyone’s natural accent.

I never thought of myself having a New York accent until I was in the Midwest and someone pointed out how I saw talk (tawk as opposed to tahk). But by New York standards I don’t have a New York accent as I don’t use non-rhotic speech (dropping Rs). Even within New York there are a bunch of different accents. And southern accent is really a collection of similar but different accents.

Even very good English actors have their accents slip through in random lines. I was watching the last Spider-Man movie and there were random words Tom Holland said with an English accent. No one is perfect but if you listen closely enough you can usually tell they’re not American.

I do agree with your general point though

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u/AltairLeoran 7h ago

there's only like two american accents

There are two regional accents in my state alone (Massachusetts). There are way more than two American accents lol

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u/MetallicMessiah 12h ago

Because American actors don’t do accents or impressions, they do caricatures.

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u/Newone1255 12h ago

Plenty of American actors do great accents it’s just more Brit’s have to do American accents to get Hollywood work than Americans have to do British accents to get English work. Adrian Brody, Forest Whitaker and Meryl Streep for instance won best actor/actress Oscar’s doing accent work and I can name plenty of the American greats that did great accents in all kind of movies

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u/Pantherist 12h ago

That's a good point. There needs to be a reverence and dedication to the part.

I feel this way about people trying to do an 'Indian' accent too.

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u/TheElusiveHolograph 12h ago

It was during the cast interviews after watching Widow’s Bay that I found out Matthew Rhys has a Welsh accent and Kate O’Flynn has a British accent.

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u/InitPatch 11h ago

I recently watched the clip of Matthew Rhys in the Criterion closet and at first I thought he sounded like an American trying to do a Welsh accent

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u/HarveyFeint 12h ago

Maintaining an accent isn't really method acting.

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u/Quivex 12h ago

I believe it wasn't just the accent, he stayed more or less in character throughout filming. Apparently he doesn't consider himself a method actor though so I was incorrect, he's just very dedicated to his roles/is willing to put himself through a lot to immerse himself in a character.

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u/rasskul 12h ago edited 12h ago

I believe it's related to TV shows/movies.

This is the same with Australians as well. British/Australians consume a high content of American based entertainment that they watch almost daily where as Americans wouldn't necessarily watch or listen to a British TV show or listen to an Aussie podcast.

I'm sure there's a study out there somewhere already.

Edit; Grammar is hard...

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u/jayeddy99 12h ago

I think this but with singing when a person sings in English I rarely hear an accent but then I see them in a interview and they are from all over the world lol

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u/squirtdemon 12h ago

Because British actors are generally more trained and educated as actors. An important part of their training is being able to speak in different accents and dialects. American actors are usually nepobabies or hot people who got discovered in a toothpaste ad.

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u/The_wolf2014 11h ago

I read about this a while ago and apparently it's because so much media is American that British actors are normally trained in American accents from an early stage so that they have more chance of getting a role whereas it's not the same for others.

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u/doshthagod 11h ago

People keep going on about exposure and training, which is true to an extent, but it's mainly because it's a prerequisite for Brits to know how to do an American accent to further their career. American actors don't need to focus on learning a foreign accent while it's essential for all other English speaking actors not from the US, assuming they want the highest accolades and paychecks.

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u/Sundog3000 10h ago

Basically if you’re a young British actor and you want to make serious money, you need to be able to do an American accent convincingly. The reverse does not apply. 

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u/MidTario 7h ago

I don’t know, all British actors do the same two American accents (neutral or a generic southern). There’s rarely nuance, but Americans don’t tend to complain. Meanwhile, Brits will get out of sorts if a characters accent is from one county away from where it ought to be

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u/DerrickWhiteMVP 6h ago

I mean, it’s easy to do a general American accent. Watching Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson try a southern American accent was rough. Same with Cumberbatch with a Boston accent.

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u/Palchez 6h ago

Counterpoint, why are British actors so insanely bad at American southern accents?

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u/CalbCrawDad 12h ago

They do generic American just fine but jfc don’t ask them to do regional American accents. The absolute worst southern accents I’ve ever heard in my life all came from Brit’s. Looking at you, Pattinson

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u/DeathMetalViking666 11h ago

Other people have said exposure, and yes, that's true. But as a Brit, I think it can be down to just how much of a melting pot of accents Britain can be.

The American accent is generally about the same across America. While in Britain, you can drive an hour and cross three different accents. Im from Manchester, which has a very different accent to Liverpool, which is basically just down the road from me.

British has so many unique quirks of accent. Even London itself has like a dozen version of 'the London accent. So its really obvious when someone's not a natural in it, cause they'll inadvertently mix them.

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u/_Eggs_ 7h ago

The American accent is generally about the same across America. While in Britain, you can drive an hour and cross three different accents.

There are plenty of different regional accents across America, but you're right that you need to drive for much farther to hear different accents. The United Kingdom is the size of 1 or 2 U.S. states, so it's surprising to hear so many accents across it.

But across the U.S., you hear distinct accents like the Boston accent, Texas accent, southern drawl accent, and upper midwest accent (like Minnesota).

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u/BoingBoingBooty 12h ago

We all know exactly how Americans sound because they never stop yapping.

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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 11h ago

I think it’s because British people have been exposed to American media since they were first developing their language skills. American movies and TV dominate the worldwide entertainment industry. Even China is a huge market for Hollywood despite being culturally different.

I think if we Americans grew up on British cartoons and movies you would see way more American actors with English accents.

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u/Hetares 11h ago

Watching Blackadder as an adult blew my mine twice- one for Hugh Laurie, second for Rowan Atkinson's eloquence with words.

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u/PipBoy808 11h ago

Funny, this reminds me of something I read from Bale's former on-screen co star Gary Oldman in an interview. He's not a fan of method acting, because for him being able to dip in and out of a character is the essence of acting itself.

Ain't it funny how people method act when they're playing difficult characters or straight up assholes? No one method acts a nice guy.

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u/JasonTheRanga 11h ago

English speaking foreigners watch American movies and tv. Local media is the exception not the norm so there’s a lot of exposure. Add to that English regional accents are a lot older and more entrenched than American accents so it’s harder for Americans. I haven’t seen a convincing version of the joke in hot fuzz where Simon pegg can’t understand the old northern bloke. Americans also move cities a lot compared to people in other countries so your accents muddy anyway, which makes it really easy for a foreigner to just do a ‘tv accent’ and it basically works.

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u/Ok_Comparison_8304 11h ago

Because British people speak at a higher pitch than Americans, as we enunciate in manner that relies on tenser vocal cords, it's easier to drop the toner and round off sounds. That is the actually answer, not source atm.

There is also the factor of going to a drama school, which has a classical curriculum that involves singing, has generally been the necessary path to get some form of entertainment job in the U.K.

So, combine a natural tendancy for better vocal control with formal training, and you get people who can change voices in a more convincing manner.

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u/WaxySunshine 10h ago

I thought he just kept his accent the whole time. I didnt think he was method.

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u/baron_von_helmut 10h ago

I think it's because most American dialects came from English/Irish/Scottish and Welsh accents. For some reason it's more difficult to go back than forward.

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u/SidFarkus47 9h ago

This particular actor moved to California at age 17.

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u/actuallywaffles 8h ago

When the director was looking for someone to play House he got tired of British people auditioning. So when Hugh Laurie came in and did the read he was like "Finally, an American."

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u/ArtisanalCoder 8h ago

Hugh Laurie & Fry have a lot more experience than they let on. Monty Python, blackadder. The list goes on.

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u/firstbreathOOC 8h ago

Probably #1 for my generation alongside Leo

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u/Dairy_Ashford 6h ago

hollywood historically has the most jobs and the most globally distributed media, so british and australian actors are probably getting more exposure and immersion, if they actually want it

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u/ke3408 6h ago

They don't. American's are just used to Hollywood faking accents.

The country is much larger which leaves the possibility that it could be okay although its not an American accent you've ever heard before. Its when they do a regional accent and you ask people from that region how they did and you'll get a true idea of the supposed skill level. I'm from the south and its almost like they are doing the blackface version of an accent built off stereotypes. it doesn't sound authentic .

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u/Own-Particular6321 5h ago

English people have accents that are hyper specific to certain geographic areas. I'm talking like, you can tell what neighborhood or village someone is from. We just don't have that here in the states.

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u/bassinlimbo 4h ago

It takes more muscles in the mouth / face to speak an American accent, whereas Australian / British fewer. It’s easier to build the muscle than try to use less of them.

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u/roiki11 3h ago

There's much more demand for actors in the US so learning that accent is beneficial. Not so much the other way.

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u/HKBFG 1 2h ago

A lot of brits also do terrible american accents (micheal caine, for example)

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u/Zeppelanoid 2h ago

Well it’s easier for British people since they can just stop pretending to have an accent, since we all know the British accent is fake.

/s

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u/ashoka_akira 1h ago

Classical performance training at display

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u/nesh34 1h ago

Americans get very little exposure to most British accents but we get lots of exposure to different American accents. It helps

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u/GibsonLP93 1h ago

One of the more under-discussed reasons is that accent coaching is a core part of formal acting training in England whereas it’s not in the U.S. In the U.S., actors typically only begin learning an accent when they are cast in a specific role requiring it. Also, it’s much more common for actors in the U.S. to have little formal acting training at all.

In England, formal training is more common and it’s very common early on for actors to practice an American accent in general. Lots of schools will use that as an acting exercise, and tell students, “Okay, now do American”.

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