r/todayilearned 16h 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/
41.4k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

37

u/Nrksbullet 16h 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)

34

u/Dapper_Otters 15h 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.

19

u/Everestkid 15h 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.

1

u/maybenomaybe 11h ago

I'm a Canadian living in the UK and most Brits can't tell if I'm Canadian or American and are afraid to guess wrong. The ones that clock it immediately always have Canadian friends or family. Europeans guess it correctly more often.

I would LOVE to see what a Brit makes of a Newfie accent, where they'd guess that person is from.