Crap Cockneys: And The Nominations For The Worst London Accent Are…
Crap Cockneys
And the nominations for the worst London accent are…
Dick van Dyke (Mary Poppins)
The mother lode. To quote his song, ‘even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious’, there is something supercalifragilisticexpialidocious about Dick’s seminal cockney performance…
Anthony LaPaglia (Frazier)
Daphne (from Manchester) has, for reasons that are never explained, a ‘cockney’ brother called Simon. Amazingly, LaPaglia (an Australian) won an Emmy for his performance.
Don Cheadle (Ocean’s series)
Cheadle plays Basher Tarr, a cockney bomb expert, and gets quality lines such as ‘We’re in Barney. Barney Rubble… Trouble!’ He reflected on it later: ‘My British friends tell me it’s a truly terrible London accent in Ocean’s 13. You know something – I really worked on that accent, went to London, spoke to people, got to know it…’
Richard Burton (Villain)
A decent performance as Vic Dakin, a homosexual gangster clearly modeled in Ronnie Kray – if Ronnie had been a Welsh thesp.
Christian Bale (The Prestige)
Universally derided for his efforts, it actually wasn’t bad at all, in the sense that he at least sounded ‘London’, if not yer actual cockernee…
Forest Whitaker (The Crying Game)
Horribly miscast here as British soldier, and his ‘Scowpion’ speech (2.48) will certainly have the voice coaches crying…
Ewan MacGregor and Colin Farrell (Cassandra’s Dream)
Maybe not the worst attempt at a South London accent, but we doubt this pair of screen brothers would pass muster down the Old Kent Road…
Mel Gibson (The Beaver)
Speaking of South London, director Jodi Foster says of Gibson’s performance as a beaver puppet: ‘Mel was originally using an English accent and we turned it into a Cockney accent. The beaver puppet is a working class south London scrapper. Some people thought it was Michael Caine or Ray Winstone or Bob Hoskins (talking as the beaver) and that Mel was lip-synching.’
Judge for yourself…
And the winner is…
Charlie Hunnam (Green Street Hooligans)
A West Ham ‘top boy’ who sounds like Tim Lovejoy with a smattering of public school. explains the rules of talking cacknee. Listen and learn, people, listen and learn …
Posted: 25th, October 2014 | In: Film, Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
