Janet McTeer


Janet McGeer is a marvel to watch in this movie. Small wonder that she received an Oscar nomination. She plays a role that is almost the polar opposite of her personal background and training.

If you didn't know anything about McTeer, you would probably assume that she's an American and perhaps even a Southerner. In fact, she was born and raised in southern England and graduated from the justly famous Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) as a classically trained actor. For years, she was essentially a stage performer who worked in Shakespearean and other classic works in Britain. In Tumbleweeds, she emerges as a rough-around-the-edges, unsettled, flighty, oft-married, insecure, but always loving Southern gal. She sustains the Southern accent, nuances, body language and blowsy demeanour throughout, a remarkable achievement considering her background.

A lot of British actors seem to adopt American accents quite easily, but this role reversal doesn't seem to work very well the other way. Renee Zellwegger pulled it off brilliantly for the Bridget Jones movies, and Brad Pitt played a loonybird Irish gypsy in Snatch with great effectiveness. Other significant examples don't spring to mind.

Anybody know if other American actors have effectively achieved this linguistic reversal?

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Great post, groggo. I just saw this movie (again) on FX, and I have to admit that few actors, American or otherwise, achieve the level of believability that Ms. McTeer does in "Tumbleweeds". Prior to knowing anything about her, I thought she was from America - perhaps a southerner, but nonetheless an actress with US roots. Boy, did I call that one wrong.

She is a true talent, and I wish I saw her in more movies here in America.




I could have been an actor...but I wound up here... :)

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Janet McTeer was amazing in this movie. I was surprised to find out she was not American. Her accent was flawless. And the chemistry she had with Kimberly Brown who played her daughter was excellent. Just a great cast in general. I love this movie.


"I eat danger for breakfast" Willow, BtVS

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[deleted]

Okay. After that cryptic and entirely unhelpful remark, I guess I'm nominated to ask the obvious question: just where was she born and/or raised?

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Okay, I'll answer my own question myself, since Glennie85 doesn't seem to give a fiddle faddle, even if s/she is right and I am clearly wrong. According to IMDb, McTeer was born in Newcastle, in far-northern England, not southern England, as I wrote originally.

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Another news flash for know-it-all Glennie85: the lovely Janet McTeer (and her family) moved to York when she was a child. She lived there until she moved to London in her late teens to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

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I agree.. she did a remarkable job...
playing a train wreck for a mother.
Though she loved her daughter...in her own way


her efforts reminds me of Cate Blanchett in The Gift, and The Missing.

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McTeer was indeed remarkable. She exhuded Southern womanhood throught the movie too!


"A real man would rather bow down to a strong woman than dominate a weak one"

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[deleted]

I rewatched the film recently and her performance certainly holds up well. Her Southern belle is so vital and real - not once did she tip over into caricature. An utterly transformative and believable performance.

As for your question, the only person who's done it flawlessly in my opinion - and I'm British, by the way - is Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady.

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I truly love McTeer's acting. She was so believable as an unstable train wreck in this touching film. I also loved her in The Songcatcher.

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I also thought Janet McTeer deserved the Oscar for this gem of a movie. If you can ever find it, she was also very good in a movie called, Hawks. One of her earlier roles, if not her first.
I can never find it. I'd LOVE to see it again.

Anyway, an American who did a quite good British accent was Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma.
One of the worst American attempts at an accent is Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly. woof

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I don't believe doing accents is an essential part of acting or even a remarkable talent. Either you got or you ain't -- and even parrots have got it, hence the term "parroting". You asked for examples. The one that springs to mind is Alan Alda doing Laurence Olivier doing Richard III's famous speech.

Brits have a big headstart in this form of oral expression -- from the time the Rolling Stones, the Animals etc started taking on Black American blues voices in the early 1960s.

It helps a lot if your culture is outward-looking for "inspiration". Generations of males in my family, divorced from our native American culture and living in a British colony for more than half a century, have enjoyed mimicking various American voices from tv and movies. And for generations, American movie actors were satisfied depicting their own culture on screen as all that was required by the audience. But even then, actresses like Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, later Grace Kelly, cultivated what were politely called trans-Atlantic voices, but actually much closer to upper-crust Brits.

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