i find it strange ... but is it due to the british / american / other countries cross pollination in movies and tv series.... eg brit actors in house, homeland , oz actors in mentalist , etc.... but enjoy the story lines.....
shareI think it's due to the fact that Chloe was the best person for the role.
What's strange about it? If you would remove all actors with foreign backgrounds from US TV and cinema, it would look rather empty.
Of the five actors nominated for Best Actor, two are born in the USA.
I think that the economic distress of the last decade in America has shifted the balance a little and opened some doors for British actors over here. Look at Batman, Spiderman, Superman, The Wire, Walking Dead, all full of Brits playing Americans in lead roles, just for a few examples.
What a lovely way to burn...
Actually, I disagree that it the "recent financial distress" responsible... Hollywood has continued to do quite well despite of it...justs Studios are a bit less likely to take risks, however. Instead, they tend to stick with things that have pre-built audience and fan-bases, doing sequels to existing franchises and reboots, etc.
Instead, I think it's actually a lot more to do with the expansion of the internet in terms of access (i.e., Netflix) and speeds... it's making the divide between continents much, much smaller. Suddenly it's a lot easier for British and other non-US actors to have their work seen... for exposure to audiences outside of original regions... etc.
A good example of this would happening would be Doctor Who... which, up until the last few years, had quite a limited audience in the U.S. but has now been building greatly. Part of that is because easy access to the show on Netflix Instant Streaming and social media.
But, in this case, I suspect it was due to Chloe being the right person for the role. I also suspect that it was a role that not a lot of actresses would be interested in or willing to take... especially to an actress overly concerned with their image who can only think about how damaging it would be having photos and videos where she is topless and with a prosthetic penis forever haunting them online. Most, I suspect, would see it as a potential or likely career killer. But again, I think she was great for the role, regardless.
You know what I find curious? It seems to me, at least in my experience, that British people claim that American actors can't do British accents. I get a feeling that this is somehow snobbery. I don't have any evidence, just a feeling. The only time I've ever noticed a British actor doing an American accent was on Dr. Who one time- it was an episode set in America during The Great Depression. The accents on several of the actors were atrocious. It may have been on purpose, I don't know. Anyway, I think Brits doing American accents sound legit, and so too, Americans doing Brit accents
shareTell an American actor to do an RP accent and most of them can do at least a passable one. It's when they have to do a specific regional dialect (if an actor is brave enough to actually attempt it, and there are a lot who don't even try) that they more often than not muck it up. The same thing happens to quite a few UK actors as well -- I'm not going to gloss over that. The fact remains that I've yet to hear a convincing Birmingham, Manchester, Yorkshire, Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Glasgow, Aberdeen, or Inverness accent (just to name a scant few) out of someone from North America.
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My middle name is ready. No, that doesn't sound right. I eat ready for breakfast.
No doubt but then we all know even some UK actors muck up regional accents. ;)
Gentle ribbing aside, it's absolutely no different vice versa. For standard Northeast / Northwest educated and often enough Brooklyn/NYC they're passable but I can't count how many times I've gone to check where an actor was actually from (and found it was the UK or AUS) after hearing a horribly botched Boston, Upper Midwest, Southern, Lousiana, Texan, or other distinctive US accent.
Just tonight I watched Ruth Wilson once again complete flub her accent on The Affair and that's on top of not sounding remotely like someone raised in Montauk or The Hamptons even when she doesn't drop it. Dominic West is at least more consistent but has never sounded like someone with a natural accent from any actual place in the US. First time I watched The Wire I looked up his bio to figure out where his odd take on an urban working class accent came from.
Don't even get me started on Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead. I'll leave that to a bajillion others:
http://forums.previously.tv/topic/514-southern-accents-mostly-horrible/
It is snobbery to think that Americans can't pull off a British accent. There are just as many Brits who couldn't pull off an American dialect as well— it's not a national matter. Renee Zellweger couldn't have been more British in the Bridget Jones films, and she's from TEXAS for Christ's sake.
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