I loved this film but the one thing that nearly ruined it for me was Kim Catrall's phony accent. What kind of English accent is it supposed to have? I found it unlike any other Brit accent I've ever heard. Totally affected in my opinion. Please any accent specialists out there who have some light to shed on this issue.
share[deleted]
[deleted]
You can hear strong elements of her normal accent all the time during this film. Especially on certain words.
Then on other words she affects an almost pitch-perfect queen's english. I actually asked a friend what nationality Kim Catrall was supposed to be and she replied: "American".
Both I and my friend are english. I know that she raised in Canada though, so thats a double-whammy of accent innaccuracies. She wasn't the only one though, my mother had the same reply. That shows how bad it was.
Seriously there are people who speak like that in England. It was far more common around 30 years ago especially among actresses but as bad accents go I have heard far far worse especially on "Frasier" often by non-US actors, none worse than Anthony La Paglia(?).
shareAnthony LaPaglia is Australian. The Australian accent is based on lower class British, mostly from the south, transported convicts, often from Ireland, and mixed with a slight Aboriginal twang and seasoned with the world's most colorful colloquialisms. In the last half of the 20th century there was a lot of immigration from non European countries, such as Lebanon, China, and Turkey. There is a also quite a difference in the speech of the educated and working class Australians. English as spoken by the citizens of former colonies, such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada can often sound a little strange, if not 'off' until you realize where they come from. Additionally, the British Isles have many, many different regional accents. Thus, most English speakers do not sound as if they were trained at RADA.
shareSome people doggedly retain the accent they first learned through thick and thin and some people will start to pick up the accent of those around them in a few weeks.
I assumed that KC was of the latter type and was either:
1) English but had lived and worked for many years in the states.
2) American and had lived in England for many years working for Lang.
I have met many people in r/l who have unusual accents because they have spent long periods living and working away from their 'home' accent.
From the start the voice reminded me of someone and now I have it; Glynis Barber especially in "Dempsey & Makepeace". She was also in "Blake's 7" and a remake of "The Wicked Lady". When I was a teenager I used to really fancy her and eventually saw her in a play with Denis Waterman.
shareI wouldnt have minded so much if her accent had been uniform but it was varying wildly throughout the film. At various points she could have been chanelling the Queen, Miss Havisham, Lady Bracknell, an American pretending to be English and English pretending to be American!
As someone pointed out earlier, her delivery outside the house when she was smoking was excruciating. Cant remember the lines but I thought of the Queen's high reedy delivery of 'my husband and I...'!
It wavered too much that was the problem. Her opening scenes had a decent English accent and the next scene it was mid Atlantic.
Its that man again!!
I actually wasn't sure whether she was supposed to be British or American, to be honest (a Brit talking here). Perhaps it was intentional on Polanski's part - she does play an ambiguous role in the film, after all - we don't know for certain if she was Lang's mistress or not, what was the real story about her husband, or did she have anything to do with making sure that the Ghost was at the book's launch (although would it make sense for the CIA to assign her to Lang when they've already got Ruth in place?) Alternatively, a Brit who's been working in the USA for some time and has picked up a hybrid accent? Basically, that was the interpretation I decided to put on it - it never really became an issue for me.
As for Pierce Brosnan's accent - it's actually very similar to the one Tony Blair has these days, now that he's spending most of his time in the States. Blair's hint of an American accent might not be all that obvious to US listeners yet, but it's certainly noticeable on this side of the pond.
The OP's original comment is laughable. She's done interviews and shows here in the UK where she speaks her original native British tongue. It's completely natural and normal. Quite why you thought she sounded fake when its actually part of her real self is most bizarre.
As someone who's been born and raised here in the UK my whole life there was nothing unusual about her accent, obviously, because... there isn't anything unusual about hearing that here.
Um? I'm pretty sure those interviews are done with a fake accent. Besides she didn't even grow up in Britain, she grew in Canada.
I've seen plenty of interviews where she speaks with a odd sort of transatlantic hybrid accent.
[deleted]