His accent

I've actually heard that of all the American accents, a classic Southern is the absolute closest to British. We slur a lot of the same sounds I think. Perhaps this is affected by immigration patterns? I mean, the Northern US got a much wider range of nationalities, but almost everyone whose families have been in the South for a century or two seem to be from what's now the United Kingdom.

haha, Alan's had a few movies in which he had to put on a Southern accent. I dont really like his southern accent.

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In Die Hard, though, his American accent was intentionally bad. It wasn't supposed to be convincing.

Remember that in Die Hard Hans Gruber is German, so the American accent in that movie is an American accent mimicked by a German, not by a genuine American, if I understood the movie correctly.

I do have to say that it always surprises me when people complain about the accents of actors when trying to do an accent different from their own. Faking an accent has nothing to do with acting but everything to do with your natural ability to mimic sounds. Something that some people do very well and other people do very badly. In fact, most people do very badly. This is why usually when people learn a language after the age of 12 they tend to have an accent in the new language all their live, even though they may be living in the country of the second language. This is because often the sounds you need to use are not in your phonetic system anymore. Actors may be able to mimic intonation but they are often caught by using slightly wrong vowels or consonants. This is completely normal and as I said, has nothing to do with acting. I know this for myself. I've lived in an English speaking country for ten years and I can say that I'm pretty fluent. But I don't fool anyone when it comes to the accent. I always give it away that I'm not a native speaker.

And accents between different dialects of the same language can be just as difficult to fake. So focus on the actors acting but not whether or not he could do a perfect accent or not.

He was, as I recall, from Tennessee, which has a distinctive accent--like most of the South. I've grown up around DC and we don't have any discernable accent. But once when I was in Detroit, people kept commenting on my quaint southern accent. Maybe that's because we do say "you all" and they equate that with southern.

My Father was from Richmond, VA and they say their "o's" much like the Canadians. No one else in the South does that. A Tidewater VA accent is quite different from a Richmond accent.

While I can't tell a North from a South Carolina accent, I can tell either from a Mississippi or Alabama accent--and the accents of those from Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Maybe that comes from living closer to the south (and having lived in N. Carolina and had that accent as a child).

I can also tell the difference between a French Canadian and an Parisian accent. Most of the native French speakers in the Da Vinci Code were French Canadians, not Parisians. I can even tell the difference between a Parisian accent from someone from Marseilles. Having an ear for accents may depend, at least in part, on where someone comes from. (I lived in Paris for a four months and speak French. Whatever that may mean.)

I thought Rickman's accent was charming and fit his character beautifully. I don't recall ever getting distracted by his British accent sneaking in. Next time I watch it when it comes on HBO again, I'll have to look out for that. It sounded like a Tennessee accent of a very distinctive person to me.

When it comes to accents, though, it's hard to top Meryl Streep.

When he was a child, he had a speech disability: his lower jaw was very tight, causing his words to be indistinctive and muffled. He still has a slight speech impediment, it is the tight lower jaw which gives him his distinctive drawl.

^ this is what biscuitt is referring to I'm sure. It was really quite intersting reading about Alan on his page.

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