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 brian cox interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Brian Cox chooses accents over altruism. When the Special Olympics wanted a film made that didn’t portray their athletes in a sentimental and mawkish manner, they approached gross-out merchants the Farrelly Brothers. The result, with the Farrellys as executive producers, is the fun but rather incongruous The Ringer. Even stranger still, though, is the appearance of Dundee’s Brian Cox in a slapstick role - it’s he who comes up with the bonkers scam of making his nephew, Johnny Knoxville, pretend to be mentally challenged so that he can win a bet on the outcome of the Special Olympics. Fresh from being awarded this year’s Empire Icon Award, Cox says that it wasn’t actually altruism that persuaded him to venture into buffoonery, but a desire to play with language and accents. “It’s always been a conscious decision on my part to play American roles,” he explains. “What I focused on was the idea that I really wanted to be more accurate, more accepted in the American vernacular. Not just in terms of my voice, but in my whole approach to acting. I found it liberating when I was a little boy just to talk in an American accent. Because if you talk in a British accent, you have to round everything out and make it just so.” Accents are obviously an issue for Cox. He says he longs for the days when English wasn’t homogenised, and he could go into the local Italian restaurant and hear folks “speak with the musicality of Italian and Scottish mixed together, where neither would dominate. But that just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”  If you follow Cox’s argument to its logical conclusion, an actor can never give a great performance if his or her accent is wrong. But is language and/or accent really that important in what is essentially a visual medium? Acting isn’t about impersonation - an ability to do accents, although useful, should never really be the major consideration when choosing a part. Aren’t interesting characters, a good story and, yes, altruism far better motives?
Kalem Aftab
The Ringer, on national release 24 March 06.
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Read members' comments related to this film.
comment by DharialDelft
Mar 28, 2006
I think Anthony Hopkins does a very good Kiwi accent, especially when you consider he's from Invercargill and they have a slightly different accent to the rest of New Zealand (being heavily influenced by their Scottish forbears). I was brought up in New Zealand and I thought the movie was brilliant and his accent was very good!
comment by Valliere
Mar 27, 2006
Okay - maybe some of the good examples? Christian Bale's got a US accent down so well I heard some Americans started claiming him after Batman. It was just as perfected in American Psycho and The Machinist, too. Any other good ones spring to mind?
comment by fingerchimp
Mar 27, 2006
tommy lee jones in blown away...i spent the whole film wondering how a mexican had managed to join the IRA 
comment by kendo, man!
Mar 27, 2006
Just take the Sean Connery route.Russian submarine captian, Scottish accent. British super spy, Scottish accent. Any role he plays, Scottish accent. So much for Method, were you arn't supposed to notice the actor at all.
comment by Valliere
Mar 25, 2006
I'd think accents are as much a part of the quality of an actor as the acting itself, and some are quite good. Localized accents, though, can be quite tough to pick up, so we have to forgive some attempts, if they aren't too blatantly egregious. And Americans, without plenty of training, should never try to imitate another accent. I'd rather hear an American accent from an American acting the brit (french, german, russian, etc.) than a badly stereotyped "RP" which is so distracting it almost inevitably ruins the film (Kevin Costner in Robin Hood? Not that the acting or film was much to brag about -- but why make it worse?  ). One of the things that'll nause up a film as much as a poorly done accent, though, is the scripting of a part in some stereotypical local dialect *plus* the actor muddling the accent. Rule of thumb should be, if the actor can't do the accent, well, then, write the part accordingly, and use other tools than language to illustrate origins.
comment by CombineHarvester OfSorrow
Mar 24, 2006
Brad Pitt in the devils own....Ugh.Foe those who need to know, Cookstown is not "a wee fishin village on lough neagh", but a bustling market town at the foot of the sperrins, and it's residents don't talk like they picked up their accents after half an hour in a north belfast taxicab.
comment by weegie
Mar 24, 2006
i think brian (can i call you brian?) is right about accents - it's important to get it right. there's nuffin worst than a misplaced accent. slipped accents are annoying.i'm completely biased, of course. i love my accent and get pissed off when when its done badly (why not hire actors from the right place?) it's particularly noticeable when it's your own accent folk are attempting. i always thought maggie smith was scottish cos of her great edinburgh accent in the prime of ms jean brodie (but then again, embra accent is one of the easiest to master). and hugh laurie's american accent in house sounds spot-on. anthony la paglia's accent in fraiser? i've been put off from seeing the worlds fastest indian because of anthony hopkins attemp at an antipodean accent.
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