For an actor playing a Brit, one of the hardest parts of the job is nailing the accent.
Unfortunately, not all of them get it right. For every Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones (flawless), there exists a nadir of misjudged vowels and half-baked consonants as foreigners attempt to sound authentic.
With Moon Knight due to hit screens shortly, criticism has already been swirling around Oscar Isaac’s attempt at a London accent.
Fortunately for him, he’s not the first person to get it wrong. Here’s our list of the worst offenders: cover your ears…
Dick Van Dyke, Mary Poppins
The place where accents come to die. Dick Van Dyke’s infamously mangled Cockney twang meanders all around the British Isles before landing somewhere in the Atlantic, but he carries it off with such brio that you forgive him for it.
After the film came out, Van Dyke defended his portrayal of chimney sweep Bert, saying he “was working with an entire English cast and nobody said a word” about how bad it was. However, he has since apologised (at the 2017 Baftas, no less), for subjecting audiences to the “most atrocious Cockney accent in the history of cinema.” Hear, hear.
Don Cheadle, Ocean’s Eleven
For no discernible reason whatsoever, American Don Cheadle chose to play his character of Basher Tarr as a Brit, despite the vast majority of the Ocean’s franchise taking place in the US.
Playing the heist team’s electronics expert, Cheadle attempts to sound like a London criminal – and even watched more than a hundred hours of Michael Caine performances to bring his accent to life. Unfortunately for him, it was dead on arrival.
Charlie Hunnam, Green Street Hooligans
Sometimes, even Brits fail at pulling off British accents, and that dubious accolade goes to Geordie Charlie Hunnam, whose turn as a Cockney in American film Green Street Hooligans fell just a little bit short.
Tune in and brace yourself for the spectacle of Elijah Wood being educated in the nuances of rhyming slang by a man whose voice cannot discernibly be pinned to any one location. Better luck next time?
Shia LaBeouf, Nymphomaniac
What do you get if you put together America wild card Shia LaBeouf, a violent sex flick and a Cockney accent? The answer appears to be: a mess. During the course of Lars von Trier’s bizarre film, LaBeouf segues between American and Cockney to create a pan-Atlantic catch-all dialect that proves more than a little distracting to listen to. Arguably more distracting than the sex itself.
Karl Urban, The Boys
As a Lord of the Rings alumnus, you would think that Karl Urban would be able to pull off a British accent. And he can. But in ultra-gory superhero satire The Boys, he goes for a bizarre Cockney hybrid that ends up being more than a little confusing. Is it Cockney? Is it his attempt at tough-boy British? Or is it, indeed, a creation entirely of his own making? The jury is still out.
Keanu Reaves, Dracula
Hollywood hot shot Keanu Reaves has proved time and again that he can kill it on the big screen – and indeed, kill the guys responsible for the demise of his dog. But unfortunately, a British accent is still on his hit list. In the 1992 retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Reeves plays nice guy Jonathan Harker opposite Gary Oldman’s titular vampire.
Unfortunately, though the film received positive reviews on the whole, the accents came in for a particular roasting. Not one to revisit – or indeed resurrect.
