English Accents in Hollywood

ENGLISH ACCENTS IN HOLLYWOOD ENGLISH ACCENTS IN HOLLYWOOD

For decades now, Hollywood has been making films with goodies and baddies. Which ones do you prefer? These days there’s a new trend to use actors with posh English accents as the baddies. Why is this?

Russians and Germans

Films with goodies and baddies are much easier to follow. It’s all so simple as the world is divided up into light and dark, night and day, and good and evil. Traditionally the goodie is the good-looking man or woman; and the baddie is the ugly one who smokes. Accents have also played an important part in identifying the goodies and the baddies. Just after World War 2 the baddies were the ones with heavy German accents. Then, during the Cold War, they had east European accents. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was the turn of the South Africans. But more recently, it’s been the English. And the English accent most commonly used is a posh, upper-middle-class one. If you’ve ever heard actors such as Laurence Olivier, Jeremy Irons, and James Mason, or people such as Prince Charles and the Queen speaking in English, you’ll know which accent we’re talking about. For many British and American people this accent has a ring of sophistication, cruelty and evil about it. It’s symptomatic of arrogance and snobbishness, and it’s the accent most associated with the image of the English as cold, calculating and superior.

English Actors

So which films have baddies with posh English accents? There are lots of them to choose from. Rob Roy (starring Liam Neeson) is a good example with English actor Tim Roth as the sadistic English gentleman who rapes, kills and steals his way across Scotland. Another film to watch out for is Michael Collins (once again starring Liam Neeson), which is all about Ireland’s struggle for independence from the British Empire. Charles Dance plays the part of an English agent with a posh accent who’s been sent to Ireland to wipe out the Irish independence movement. Some other good examples include the film Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (starring Kevin Costner), with the evil sheriff of Nottingham played by English actor Alan Rickman. In this film, the goody is played by Kevin Costner, who has an American accent; and The Silence of the Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins (OK, he’s Welsh, but he can speak with an English accent) who plays the role of the intellectual psycho: Hannibal Lecter. Here are some other films featuring baddies with English accents: Basil Rathbone in The Mark of Zorro Christopher Lee in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring David Warner in Titanic (not the version with Leonardo Di Carprio) James Mason in North by Northwest, Salem’s Lot and The Verdict Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With a Vengeance and The Lion King Jonathan Hyde in Jumanji Peter Cushing in Star Wars Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park Sir Ian McKellen in X-Men Now turn over and see two extracts from a film with an English actor as a baddy.

G L O S S A R Y

a goody n the hero of a film a baddy n the bad person in a film heavy adj strong posh adj upper class, sophisticated a ring of sophistication exp if something has a “ring of sophistication” about it, it sounds sophisticated symptomatic of exp a sign of, an example of snobbishness n thinking that you are superior to everyone else calculating adj always planning on how to get things without thinking about other people sadistic adj with a desire to hurt other people to rape vb to sexually attack a struggle n a fight wipe out phr vb to eliminate

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