MovieChat Forums > Appaloosa (2008) Discussion > Jeremy Irons' voice in this film...

Jeremy Irons' voice in this film...

posted 14 years ago by gregfades
17 replies | jump to latest

Jeremy Irons is indeed a fine actor. However, I kept getting distracted during Appaloosa by the accent he adopted for this role. It sounded to me like he was impersonating Daniel Day-Lewis' character's voice from 'There Will Be Blood' (which was released 10 months earlier and to great acclaim). Day-Lewis' accent in that film was so unique and defined that it caught me off guard to see somebody else almost mimicking it. Has anybody else noticed this or thought the same? Nothing against Irons, or even this film, but I found myself paying attention to that detail a lot.

[–] Bilwick1 14 years ago

It reminded me of DDL's "Bill the Butcher" voice in GANGS OF NEW YORK. I guess since the character was supposed to be a New Yorker (a touch invented for the movie but not in novel) Irons' was going for something that could sound 19th Century New Yorkey. As has been discussed on another thread, they could have just made his character English, since there were plenty of Brits in the Old West, especially in the cattle trade; and it's not that far out for him to have been a New Yorker who originally came from England.

However, once I noticed he was using an accent, I didn't find it that much of a distraction, just an interesting little touch.

[–] jeunet1 14 years ago

Thought the same thing throughout the entire movie!!!!! Deinfitley a DDL imitation!

Your over confidence is your weakness.......

Your faith in your friends...is yours!!!

[–] samantha3 14 years ago

Or it could be that they were both striving for the same kind of effect. After all, JI is an experienced and gifter actor of as long experience as DDL, trained in much the same way. I really don't think it's quite fair to him to say he was "imitating" DDL.

Was DDL playing a Brit living in the U.S., BTW? I didn't see the film. If you mean THERE WILL BE BLOOD. As for what he was doing in GANGS OF NEW YORK, that was such a mess of over-acting (at the behest of the director, I'm sure) that I don't recall how his character talked.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] samantha3 13 years ago

Scorsese, as a director, is known for allowing his actors to overact, and maybe pushing them into it. See, for example, Robert DeNiro's outrageously hammed-up acting in the remake of CAPE FEAR, as opposed to Robert Mitchum's perfect villain in the original. It's one case in which the better actor does the worse job. RM had a limited range, but within it he knew just what he was doing, and he wouldn't let a director push him into doing too much or doing the wrong thing for the character.

[–] lubin-freddy 14 years ago

Brits trying to sound American always seem to talk the same way, just as Americans trying to sound "English" usually sound the same.

"Let there be songs, to fill the air"

[–] qt_w_booty007 14 years ago

jeremy irons could talk to me with any accent and i would listen whilst drooling

[–] masked_eagle 14 years ago

It was about as good as Iron's accent in Die Hard with A Vengence. Terrible.

[–] youngian67 14 years ago

Both Irons and Timothy Spall seem to be just lilting their accents slightly rather than attempting a full American dialect. As someone already mentioned there was a contingency of Brits that made their way West, so an English background is plausible.

[–] lor_ 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure that both actors, two of the finest of the last 25 years, were approaching their voice styling from the same source: John Huston. Of course his dad, Walter Huston, in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE is the classic western performance, but John's familiar cadence and accent from many acting roles is almost exactly the sound that both DDL and JI achieved. This is not an accident, but clearly an hommage, so it wasn't a case of JI copying DDL but rather going to the same well for inspiration.

For confirmation, merely watch CHINATOWN again and you will see the nearly exact mapping of John's intonation with that used by these talented admirers of his work.

"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)

[–] gregfades 13 years ago

Hmmmm. I never thought of that but I can see your point. Interesting both should have tried it in the same year though. I'll have to re-watch CHINATOWN again now, one of my all time favorites.

[–] cockeye991 12 years ago

Exactly. The moment i heard Irons accent, which fitted the role, i was reminded of John Huston. DDL did the same thing in There Will Be Blood. Both probably prepared for their roles by watching john huston eat fish and chat in Chinatown. Nothing wrong with that, mind you.

" wants me to tell him something pretty... "

[–] samantha3 11 years ago

Is it not possible that all three are drawing on a single source we don't know abut, maybe an actor on the stage of the period, or in early movies?

Just a question.

Or maybe they all just happened to fall naturally into the same accent because of their upbringing, associations, training in acting, or whatever.

Whatever. JI's voice certainly worked for me in this film.

[–] samantha3 11 years ago

It might amuse some people to read this quote:

"...Jeremy Irons narrates all six episodes, and his elegantly purring delivery has rarely sounded so seductively ominous."

He's narrating a new series on PBS.

Doesn't answer the argument, of course...

[–] eyebrowmorroco 11 years ago

Laughable.

[–] walkerus 8 years ago

As mentioned in an earlier comment there were many, many British people moving west in the 1800s. Many were involved in the railway building that was opening up the west at this time. It would not be surprising to come across different accents, not only English, but Scots, Welsh and Irish as well as German, Scandinavian etc. The only thing I found in this very good movie that didn't fit was the extremely handsome pedigree Hereford animal that was paraded past, a show champion for sure, not the usual beast in that part of the world in those days.

[–] Jefbecco-1 8 years ago

I figured he was playing the character as a Brit who had spent enough time in the United States that he had picked up some of the dialect. Several years ago I heard an interview with an American on NPR. He had spent over twenty years in England and had a very odd accent. Combination of U.S.A. mid-western and London. Some people lose their accents while others don't and a few develop a weird polyglot dialect. My father was born and raised in Tennessee, but lived in Idaho (where I was raised) from 1969 until his death in 2016. He lost his accent entirely. Perhaps that Irons was doing that?