Accents: Part 1

In general, most of us who take on the acting profession will find ourselves, one day, presented with the challenge of doing an accent.. or two.

One of my recommendations to you is to saturate your ears with the sound of the given accent. Watch movies, documentaries and TV shows with the dialect you are looking for. I would also make your search era-specific. I’ve heard of acting schools teaching young American actors the English dialect by showing them episodes of Upstairs/Downstairs. While a funny show, unless those students are preparing a play/film set in that specific time-period (and depending on if they can tell the different regionalisms apart) listening to U/D will render them with a very mish-mashy, old English dialect. Rather, students should be shown current day shows so that their accents can be up to date. In the same vein, there is an across-the-board “go-to” for American’s when it comes to the cockney accent - Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Again, while a fantastic movie, his accent is dreadful. It’d be far better to search for an authentic cockney accent rather than go to an American imitating it badly. This advice is not just for the US -> UK accent change. It applies to every accent you intend to do. The more you listen to it, the better you will be at mimicking it.

Continued: Accents: Part 1 | The NYC Actor