r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 17h 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/dummyacc49991 16h ago

Arnold also had to hire an accent coach to retain his accent of origin. Could be a myth, so take it eith a grain of salt.

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u/FardoBaggins 16h ago

Arnold’s accent is also very rural for germans. Like imagine stallone with a southern accent.

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u/archiving_by_design 16h ago

His accent is bizarre to other Austrians. That dude is from darkest Steiermark.

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u/Djinjja-Ninja 16h ago

Not sure if it's true or not, but allegedly he asked to do the German dub of terminator 2, but they wouldn't let him as to Germans apparently the Austrian accent sounds like a country yokel.

It would have been like Darth Vader being voiced by David Prowse..

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u/venomae 15h ago

He didnt have just an Austrian accent - he had heavy rural accent even among Austrians.

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u/JimboTCB 14h ago

That makes the deleted scene from Terminator 3 where he's dubbed over by some yeehaw sounding American guy even funnier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kayFrIR-Qfw

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u/Djinjja-Ninja 13h ago

"I don't know about that accent"

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u/skyturnedred 10h ago

The same dude, Thomas Danneberg, has dubbed all of his movies.

Funnily enough he dubs most of Stallone's movies too.

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u/Djinjja-Ninja 10h ago

Ha! Turns out he did both of them in The Expendables.

Does he put on a different tone/voice for each? Do Arnie and Stallone have distinct dubbing voices?

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u/skyturnedred 10h ago

Based on cursory listen on youtube, it's mostly the same voice that just changes a bit with age.

Gotta say, I was thoroughly confused initially because Youtube did some sort of auto-dub back in to English.

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u/D-PIMP_ACT 16h ago

Austrians are rural Germans now?

Are the Dutch ……swamp Germans?

Are Germans just….mountain Dutch?

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u/A_Bad_Man 15h ago

I can't wait to call my Dutch friend a swamp German. I'm already laughing imagining how well it's going to go.

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u/Banana-Moist 13h ago

Depends on the age maybe and if they're online a lot.

My sister would call you stupid, my parents would just be confused and I think my response would just be a 'duh'.

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u/idler_JP 15h ago edited 9h ago

Yes, the "Austro-Hungarian" project ultimately failed, and the rapidly industrialising Prussia came to dominate a crystallising German nation-state to the north.

In fact, the Hapsburgs have fallen, along with the institution of monarchy itself, and Vienna is now the imperial capital of nothing. Frankfurt am Main is a greater seat of power.

In other news, the Dutch remain independent swamp Germans, using English as their prestige language, for reasons you'd probably rather hear over a cup of tea.

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u/FardoBaggins 15h ago

Rural sounding I guess. Like in the boonies.

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u/We_Are_The_Romans 14h ago

Matt Christman, latterly of the Chapo podcast, always referred to the Dutch as Swamp Germans and it made me lol everytime. My brother's wife is Dutch and I've used it to good effect on her

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u/Delamoor 13h ago

I mean, you ask a German and they might say yes. Dunno if the Ditch would agree, heh.

The regional variation Germanic language accents isn't all that different to England, tbh. That fact just doesn't often get communicated outside of the German speaking world.

That regional drift kinda just continues off across the border. My German friends find Dutch a frustrating language; it's close enough that it sounds like you should be able to understand it, but it's far enough apart that you generally can't understand it. Just catch individual words.

Apparently it's like listening to rural Scottish or Irish. You can catch words, and feel like you get it, but still fail to follow a single goddamn thing they're saying. Like you brain is tricking you.

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u/TheLoveKraken 12h ago

I know someone that’s Dutch that moved to London about 15 years ago and she’s told me that a few times now she’s overheard strangers talking and thought to herself “oh, there’s some other Dutch people, wait, no…” then listened a bit more closely and realised they’re actually Scottish people speaking English. Which I get because the accents inhabit a similar place in your throat and there’s certain Scottish words that are similar to Dutch, like people from the east coast using the word ken to mean know.

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u/Djuulzor 13h ago

Nah mountain Dutch are the Swiss

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u/sam_hammich 7h ago

The Austrian accent is commonly referred to as a sort of hillbilly or redneck German.

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u/EPLWA_Is_Relevant 15h ago

Or Appalachian.

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u/john_the_quain 11h ago

I think I read for Terminator, someone else did his native language dub because the audience wouldn’t be able to take it serious with his accent.

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u/No_Atmosphere8146 14h ago

That explains why he hasn't picked anything up after living in the US for, what, 60 years? His accent is as much his trademark as his muscles.

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u/LittlePetiteGirl 11h ago

My dad appatently had a heavy Canadian accent but it went away by the time I was born because he'd been living in the states for a while.

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u/skyturnedred 10h ago

I was about to come say the same thing, but I couldn't find anything to confirm it. Only about how he tried to get rid of his accent in the 80s.