What's wrong with american film producers and british accents?

[Caity]

Has anyone noticed the way american film producers when they try to cast an american in an english role, the actor would either speak with a strage cockney accent or a silly posh accent. do the american's think everyone in england is either a londener or speaks the queens english? like has anyone ever watched oceans eleven? whats going on with that dodgy accent?

[butter1]

which charactor do you mean in Oceans eleven...coz one of the actors is actually english.

[Caity]

the black guy in oceans eleven. :)

[butter1]

Hi Caity,

The black guy in Oceans 11 is English.  He has been in a few UK programme's and he was in Lock Stock.  His accent is true British. But to the rest of your question, yes I agree so american's doing english accents are bad...

[CarolG]

Don Cheadle is not English, he was born in USA and his cockney accent was one of the worst i've ever heard! It was actually his decision to do it not the producers as he didn't want to be compared with Sammy Davis Jr from the original. I'm laughing just thinking at how bad his accent is, and he's usually so fantastic in everything!

[lindapinda]

As CarolG says,Don Cheadle is not English,and despite a toe-curling accent in Oceans Eleven,his true acting ability was shown really well in E.R.

[maxi29]

Or how about Daphne's brother in Frasier? Despite her Manchester accent, her brother had what appeared to be a cockney accent (pure Dick Van Dyke). Are American audiences so tin-eared that they couldn't notice the difference?

[daicoses]

Coming from the same continent as the US, I have to say that unless you are constantly surrounded by different British accents, yes they do sound pretty much the same (I actually grew up thinking that Dick Van Dyke was British). I didn't realize there were different British accents until I started watching Doctor Who constantly. Now I notice a difference in the accents (still only a relatively slight one), but I still can't tell which is which or how they are characterized. I dunno, it's just what you're used to hearing. What actually are the differences?

[maxi29]

Blimey Daicoses, there's a question. It would be hard to describe all the British accents in a few paragraphs and the differences between them but they are very marked.
Just as an example, Geordies (people from Newcastle-upon-Tyne) have an accent that is partly derived from the Vikings. As a soft sooutherner, I find the thick Geordie accent hard to understand but Scandinavians apparently find it easy.
To my ear, the Geordies and the Mackems (people from Sunderland) sound the same but locals will tell them apart. On the other hand, I can recognise a Sussex accent with ease but to my northern friends think that it's just a southern accent.
Similarly, I can tell the difference between, say, a New York or a Georgia accent but would find it hard to distinguish between someone from Georgia and Alabama.
What I find strange about Frasier is that the brother's accent is *so* different from Daphne's. If it were a west Yorkshire or a Lancashire, or a Scouse accent, I could understand it, but the 'Cockney' one just jars. It would be like someone from Brooklyn having a brother who apparently comes from Macon .