Oftentimes, it is smart for an actor to placed on an accent for a task, like once they’re taking part in an actual individual in a biopic (like Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in Elvis) or when being from a sure metropolis is an enormous a part of the character’s private id (like Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey). Generally, nevertheless, actors are pressured to both lose or play up their pure accents with the intention to get roles.
Listed below are 18 actors who had been pressured to vary their accent to get roles:
1.
In a 2024 TikTok video selling her film We Stay in Time, Florence Pugh mentioned, “It’s my second film of doing my very own voice. However it has been a very long time. In actual fact, many individuals suppose that once I converse in my accent in interviews, that I am mendacity and I am placing on a faux one, and that is not true.”
2.
In the identical TikTok, Florence’s costar Andrew Garfield mentioned, “I believe it’s the primary time I’m utilizing my [real voice]. Yeah, that’s true. I believe it is true.”
3.
On a 2024 episode of her podcast Thoughts Your Personal, Lupita Nyong’o mentioned, “[At the Yale School of Drama] I made this pact with myself that I might learn to sound American in a approach that will assure me a profession in performing. As a result of clearly, I did not know very many individuals in films and tv with Kenyan accents. There was simply no marketplace for that.”
4.
Sofía Vergara as soon as tried to do away with her accent by going to voice coaches.
5.
In 2020, Kumail Nanjiani advised Selection’s #REPRESENT: Success Tales, “I’ve a Pakistani accent, however [during my early auditions] they’d be like, ‘May you make it funnier? Lean in somewhat bit.’ And sooner or later, I made a decision I simply wasn’t going to try this.”
6.
In 2024, Olivia Cooke advised The Instances that she feels “actually unhappy about” dropping her Northern English accent. She mentioned, “I do placed on a voice once I’m talking to somebody with a special upbringing to me. I am pleased with the place I come from, nevertheless it was a supply of embarrassment as a result of I did not really feel as clever as others. I talk about that to my therapist on a regular basis and check out to not do it, however I do have a chip on my shoulder about being working class.”
7.
In 2022, Diego Luna advised IndieWire, “After I was very younger, like 20 years in the past, there was a complete dialog about dropping your accent. They used to name it ‘neutralizing,’ as if it was one thing you possibly can simply do away with. It was a concern of understanding.”
8.
In 2017, Awkwafina advised Vice, “I’ve walked out of auditions the place the casting director hastily modified her thoughts and requested for accents. I refuse to do accents.”
9.
In 2023, Stephanie Hsu advised the New York Instances, “On the time once I was ending faculty and dwelling in New York, these roles weren’t obtainable within the mainstream. And I had no real interest in promoting myself or simply shrinking myself to an inappropriate cameo simply in order that I might say I added yet one more factor to my résumé. I keep in mind in 2012, I went right into a industrial audition, they usually had been like, ‘OK, might you do it once more, however with a extra Asian accent?’ And I mentioned, ‘I am so sorry, however this position shouldn’t be for me. I do not do this, and I am not on this half.'”
10.
At EW Fest in 2015, Aziz Ansari mentioned, “Ought to I do an accent? Ought to I not do the accent? That is a factor that a variety of minority actors grapple with. I as soon as was requested to audition for Transformers with Michael Bay. And it was a task for a name heart man who does an accent. And I used to be like, ‘No, I am not doing it.'”
11.
In 2022, Billy Boyd advised the My Time Capsule podcast, “I hate folks saying they can not perceive what I am saying…As a Scottish actor, each script I get that is obtained a Scottish character in it, there’s at all times the gag that any person cannot perceive them. All the time. Something I do now if that gag’s in it, I say I will not do it. The gag is overdone and never life like. It is identical to, cease being stereotypical, you realize? Simply because somebody has a special accent.”
12.
John Cho initially declined the position of Dusty Wong in Huge Fats Liar as a result of he was requested to make use of an accent, and he did not need children who watched the film to suppose laughing at folks’s accents was okay.
13.
In 2020, Matthew Rhys advised The Instances, “My agent mentioned, ‘Look, simply go in as an American, as a result of if you happen to go in as a Welsh individual, all they’ll do once you audition is pay attention for once you slip up.’ However it felt so faux, and I simply thought I used to be gonna be came upon.”
14.
When Ava Gardner moved from North Carolina to California, MGM assigned her a voice coach to do away with her Southern American accent.
15.
In 2021, Steven Yeun advised Selection’s Awards Chatter Podcast, “The primary audition I had in Chicago was referred to as Superior ’80s Promenade, which was an immersive improvised present, the place you’ve gotten this John Hughes spectrum of characters like Ferris Bueller. Then you’ve gotten your ‘Lengthy Duk Dongs,’ and I auditioned with Ferris Bueller’s opening monologue. And so they mentioned, ‘That was good. Are you able to do that each one once more in an Asian accent?’ And I will be sincere with you. I knew that I did not wish to do this. The system had no clue that is not what I needed. We had been simply in a special time. And so I keep in mind I did a shitty accent and phoned it, they usually nonetheless needed me anyway as a result of that is how far and few between Asian actors had been. So that they name, they usually mentioned, ‘We might like to rent you.’ And I mentioned, ‘No.'”
16.
In 2024, Jack Lowden advised Casting Networks, “I very hardly ever get to make use of my accent. I believe Dunkirk was one of many few the place I used to be allowed to make use of my accent, and even then I needed to persuade Mr. [Christopher] Nolan that it could be okay to let me be Scottish and fly within the air. I very hardly ever get to make use of my very own. That’s extra of a type of UK-based factor that there’s a pure pull in direction of sure accents and a push away from different accents on the British Isles.”
17.
In a 2016 editorial for NBC Information, Justin Chon mentioned that, after he drove two hours for an audition, one other actor who’d simply gone “instantly advised [him] disgustedly, ‘They need an Asian accent.'” So, he “determined to not enter the audition and drove the two-hour commute again residence.”
18.
And eventually, in 2023, Arnold Schwarzenegger advised The Graham Norton Present, “I had an English coach and an performing coach and a speech coach and an accent-removal coach, who has handed away since then, however I imply, I ought to have in any other case gotten my a reimbursement. The underside line is, I labored on it. I keep in mind, he says, ‘You understand you at all times say three [incorrectly]. It’s three, with a T-H.’ So he had me say, ‘3,333 and 1/3 with the T-H and never with the S.'”