Quotes About Accent

It's old news, me and my accent, but it always seems to make headlines.

Has my accent held me back? I don't believe it has at all. I think it can be a colourful accent.

Everyone seemed to be doing well except me and my career. And my accent was no helping me any.

When I was about five, I could do a vaguely decent American accent - straight through kind of decent - and 'Hercules' needed some kids. I definitely wasn't a good actor.

When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.

In fact, I was very conscious of my accent and used to hesitate in talking to people.

I speak Hindi with a Punjabi accent, not a Haryanvi accent.

I still have that South Indian accent. But I am working on it. Hindi audiences should feel that I am speaking like them and should relate to me.

Tony Blair adopted the accent of the audience he was speaking to, which worked very well initially, but then voters began to perceive him as phoney. The 'man of the people' act is the height of condescension.

I've never worked in my natural accent, having studied so hard to get rid of it when I moved to England as a child where I was bullied at school for 'talking funny.'

There were stereotypes: you are from the communist country so you are not a hard worker. You talk awkwardly and speak with an accent and you don't have any high education like us so you are basically stupid. And I am shorter than South Koreans - I was malnourished when I was young. It made me believe I was a loser.

I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

When I first left drama school, I was too posh for the working-class parts and not posh enough for the upper-class roles. You know what England is like: the gradations of accent and how you're judged by them are still there. I discovered that to get a break you have to lie about where you're from.

I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.

People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.

I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class.

Woodfall wasn't deliberately telling working-class stories, but John Osborne and other writers who were involved with them were writing those stories, which had never really been written before. The working-class person always had to have an accent before, was often a joker, and peripheral. At Woodfall, they were driving the film.

Most of us don't think forwarding a racist joke or speaking in an insulting 'comedic' accent is appropriate at the workplace. Unfortunately, for those raised in the toxic culture of conservatism, the sort of mentality that leads government employees to do those things is widespread.

Colossus' voice is not much different than mine, as Tim loved my natural color and range of voice, so we kept it and worked more on the Russian accent. The best note I received was to be authentic.

One of the challenges obviously with doing an accent from a time period early in history is that there aren't recordings. You would never really get the opportunity to hear exactly what you were shooting for.

To be honest, it's easier for me to speak with an American accent.

On my best day, I cannot do Scottish people. I don't even believe that's a real accent, to be honest with you. I think they probably sound like us when they're in the house. It's how they keep people away from them.