I dunno. I still think it’s both the weakest part of his portrayal, and the weakest accent of any actor on the show. It doesn’t sound like any regional accent I’ve ever heard, but rather an amateurish generic actorly “English” one. Which is too bad, because he’s otherwise wonderful in everything I’ve seen him in.
I never felt Simon Baker’s American accent was any great shakes on The Mentalist, but then with Brits Bruno Heller and Chris Long running the show, I never got the impression that the Aussie Baker’s American accent ever bugged them. It drove me nuts. He was supposed to be Californian, but was always written to say “that’s absurd” rather than “that’s ridiculous,” and several other dead giveaways.
Not as recent, but there’s always Kevin Costner’s attempt in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The accent attempt so noticeably bad that it got its own jokes in Men In Tights…
I suppose we could include Ryan O’Neal doing the Irish protagonist in Barry Lyndon. You’d think that, with his ancestry, he’d be able to nail the accent, but nooooo…
Still haven’t seen that one, but this reminds me of two film meta-things I always find amusing:
When an actor barely manages the accent for a major character, so there are all these carefully orchestrated comments in the publicity interviews about what a difficult accent it is, or;
When an actor nails an historical accent, and loads of people are complaining it’s not accurate, using their contemporary accents as proof. Doesn’t matter how many historical videos prove the naysayers wrong.
Okay I am late on this. But this was brought up on The Amazing Collosal Podcast sadly it is old enough it is a premium only now. He said that he was there with all these English actors and nobody said a word to him about how bad it was or offered any help at the time so he is puzzled by it all mostly.
You know, Shaw was (to me, anyway) so affecting in his unmasked scene, that’s the biggest reason why I was so indignant that the Special Edition turned his force ghost into Hayden Christensen.
