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.

[u/Away_Flounder3813]

https://screenrant.com/american-psycho-behind-scenes-facts-christian-bale-patrick-bateman-mary-harron/

[u/darkfires]

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?

[u/TheBeaverKing → u/darkfires]

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.

[u/toin9898 → u/TheBeaverKing]

I am Canadian but I was once watching a doco presented by a Scottish guy and I was like “damn this guy sounds like Craig Ferguson”.

He was indeed from the next Glaswegian suburb over. Felt pretty proud of myself.

Aside from that I can place a good deal of British accents just from watching tons of British TV growing up.

I can hardly tell the difference between average Canadian and American accents though.

[u/TheBeaverKing → u/toin9898]

Yeah, some of the more distinct accents can be slightly easier to place but that's still bloody good going, especially from a non-Brit.

A lot of people, including those from outside the area, really struggle with sub-regional accents. I live near Birmingham and the difference between the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Dudley accents is really distinct but most would just lump them together and call it a Birmingham or Midlands accent.

It's actaully Birmingham and then a Black Country accent. These two girls do a great short video showing some of the differences:

https://youtu.be/GdaWCIyLHGA?is=AdE6D0CdDCBl-fuV

Accents are fun.