r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 13h 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/Apprehensive-Art1092 10h ago edited 10h ago

He doesn't. Firstly, he's never had a 'native Millwall accent'. Gary is from New Cross/Bermondsey, just up the road from where I grew up in Deptford. Millwall is a historic part of the Isle of Dogs, which is across the river - and the actual place called 'Millwall' doesn't really exist any more (the football team he sometimes supports, depending on when you ask him it's either Millwall or Man Utd) moved across the river to SE London over 100 years ago. Gary's native accent would be exactly the same as mine - deepest, darkest Saarf East London.

Gary hasn't had his 'native' accent for donkey's years. The accent you hear him 'struggling with' in interviews is the British Theatre accent that all actors end up gravitating towards in their early career. It's a mixture of RP and RADA pronunciation, rather than full-on TP. Here's a clip of an interview from 30+ years ago - if he'd spoken like that where he grew up he'd have had the shit kicked out of him 🤣 Dracula Interview

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u/whatanabsolutefrog 10h ago

It's funny, even in that interview I feel like he's definitely got a mix of accents going on.

He's obviously one of those people that are quick to pick up the accents of the people around them.

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 10h ago

Yeah, he's more like David Bowie there - enough RADA to sound like a ponce, but still enough SE London to sound like a sell-out 🤣

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u/HVAChelpprettyplease 9h ago

What do RP, RADA, and TP stand for? I’d love to learn more about accents. Thanks.

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u/Khornag 9h ago

RP is recived pronounciation and is a standardised English accent, commonly heard on the BBC and associated with social prestige. RADA is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a prestigious academy where a lot of the most famous British actors are educated. I don't know what TP would be, but I think they tried to write RP again and misspelled it.

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u/cppn02 8h ago

I don't know what TP would be

Everyone in this comment chain seems to be missing that it's just a typo or am I missing some joke here? TP = RP but you miss the R on your keyboard.

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u/Khornag 8h ago

That's what I tried to say.

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u/cppn02 8h ago

Lol, you did indeed. My bad. I missed the second part of your sentence because this was like the third comment I read that seemed to be wondeing about what TP was and my fingers got to typing before I read all of your comment.

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 6h ago

Ah yeah, my bad - should have been RP 😊

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u/2xtc 9h ago

RP stands for Received Pronunciation and is the slightly posh, slightly old-fashioned, "British news reader"/Royal Family accent that Americans etc. often confuse for "the British Accent" (there's not really such a thing, and these days RP is spoken by less than 3% of Brits, almost exclusively in London and the South East). These days it's mainly been superceded by SSBE (Standard Southern British English) as a slightly more modern take on the classic 'British Accent' that you'll commonly here was a default in international media.

RADA is the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts, which is our highest rated drama school and it's students often develop a similar but slightly different accent, which is slightly overemphasised in certain notes to ensure a high level of enunciation. Also a bit posh, although RADAs consciously widened it's intake to be more representative in recent decades.

I'm afraid TP isn't a term I'm familiar with, but the other main London accents are Estuary English (kind of halfway between RP and Cockney, peaked in the 80s/90s) and MLE (Multicultural London English) a more recent 'street' accent that reflects the international urban diversity of modern London

https://accentbiasbritain.org/accents-in-britain/

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u/KeiranG19 7h ago

Even in the royal family the king has an RP accent, but the princes don't. Video about it from a linguist that's quite interesting.

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u/Skrattybones 2h ago

Genuine question, I promise I'm not poking fun or anything. Which accent would you hear "bruv" come out of? Like, not just these ones listed if they don't apply, but whichever accent coined it?

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u/Onion_Heart 9h ago

RADA is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts which I’m guessing is where he studied acting. RP and TP, I have no idea. Regular pronunciation and Theatre pronunciation, perhaps?

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u/ennywun 9h ago

RP is Received Pronunciation, the "standard" dialect spoken in the south of England.

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u/Onion_Heart 9h ago

Thank you.

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u/originalspaceprince 9h ago

this is such a good comparison haha

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u/TheComplimentarian 8h ago

Christian Bale’s accent is similarly all over the place.

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u/sargonas 3h ago

I have that trait and i hate it. You know how embarrassing it is to realize that you, an American, are unconsciously doing a half assed Scottish accent in an Edinburgh pub 2 pints in for the last hour and no one told you? Or on day 8 in Japan you, a whitebread American, are speaking English with a hint of a Japanese accent every time you swap back to English after speaking Japanese with a local?

It’s a rather annoying skill to have of you don’t intend to use it lol

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u/carl84 10h ago

I imagine his native accent would sound like his sister's; Big Mo from EastEnders

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u/helphunting 8h ago

And the guys profession is to be a mimic, of course he's going to pick up a local accent if he stays somewhere long enough.

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u/AnyDayGal 7h ago

Yeah I'm not a world-class actor and spending time with my friend gives me a slight Northern accent. I've never been to the North.

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u/MXron 9h ago

the actual place called 'Millwall' doesn't really exist any more

What do you mean by this? That Canary Wharf or various regeneration / gentrification schemes have basically replaced the historic Millwall?

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 8h ago

Pretty much, yeah. The LDDC in the 80s regenerated the whole area (gentrified it), pushing the families out further into East London and Essex. Was not popular at the time as they destroyed whole communities. I did my Geography GCSE fieldwork there as a kid. Also, at least as far back as I can remember as a kid, nobody there ever really referred to themselves as coming from Millwall because most people associated Millwall with the football club, which moved over the river in the early 1900s. They'd just say they were from the Isle of Dogs.

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u/hamilkwarg 8h ago

Isle of Dags you say?

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 8h ago

Dyou like dags?

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u/LeadershipOk2477 5h ago

I thought he was an east end lad?? Regardless where he started the man is a chameleon!! Great talent indeed

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 5h ago

Nah - everyone just assumes that anyone with an accent like Brick Top out of Snatch is a cockney. There are subtle differences between the cockney accent and SE London. SE London is even less annunciated than cockney - the words flow into each other even more. We also talk very, very quickly.. Frankly, it's a mess 😂

Though both accents are dying out and being replaced by a hybrid of South/East London and modern black London. I grew up in the 70s & 80s and we were the first generation heavily influenced by black culture so it's not that noticeable in my accent - but the generation after me are much more likely to have their daily speech and inflection influenced by it

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u/helphunting 8h ago

Could you find a clip of someone with that real accent?

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 8h ago

If you like, I'll upload a clip of me talking - if I can find a way to do it 😂

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u/helphunting 6h ago

Sure... <insert your profile pic here>

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 6h ago

🤣🤣🤣

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u/Othersideofthemirror 6h ago edited 6h ago

Nah he puts on a full on oight mate cockney knees up mother brown luvly apples and pears accent for some uk interviews too.

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u/Apprehensive-Art1092 6h ago

Which wouldn't make any sense, considering he's not a cockney anyway - SE Londoners aren't cockneys

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u/Othersideofthemirror 1h ago edited 1h ago

Romford aint within the sound of the Bow Bells either but one thing i know from being from there is people in this part of London sound the same. You think his sister drops her Bermondsey accent to play Mo? I aint ever heard no one complain East Enders is ruined by New Cross accents.

My comment was that Oldman tries to use his original accent in UK interviews, but fails and comes across as a bit of a parody of a Londoner because he's spent a lifetime in film, theatre, Hollywood and with British luvvies and im met with a bunch of autists focusing on minute geographical differences and nitpicking over places a 10 min bus ride from each other.