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Celebs Who Change(d) Their Accents and/or Vocal Mannerisms

Started by Satchmo Distel, July 29, 2018, 05:10:57 PM

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Thatcher - compare 1971-75 to the Iron Lady voice. A deliberate makeover.

John Peel - 1967 v 1980s, very different, trying to eliminate the public school background

John Lennon varied the scouse content of his accent quite a bit and then after 1971 became more New York inflected for obvious reasons.

Bowie - tried to be more working class

Mick Jagger - sometimes posh (say, at the cricket), sometimes more geezer.

Stuart Maconie - not so much accent change but I think he talks more slowly. Listen to him in the early 90s and he sounds like he's on speed by comparison.

Elvis Costello and Morrissey both seem to vary the amount or Irish and northern in their voices, despite not having been raised in Ireland or lived in the north for decades

Bazooka

John 'Torchwood' Barrowman is the king of this, having seen him speak American in everything, I caught him on a vet/animal rescue thing and he was speaking full Scot tongue, thought I'd had a stroke.

Clownbaby

Quote from: Bazooka on July 29, 2018, 05:21:40 PM
John 'Torchwood' Barrowman is the king of this, having seen him speak American in everything, I caught him on a vet/animal rescue thing and he was speaking full Scot tongue, thought I'd had a stroke.

I hate that so much.

chocolate teapot

Quote from: Bazooka on July 29, 2018, 05:21:40 PM
John 'Torchwood' Barrowman is the king of this, having seen him speak American in everything, I caught him on a vet/animal rescue thing and he was speaking full Scot tongue, thought I'd had a stroke.

I don't know if you can help me with this but in the early to mid nineties there was a kids game show based on film trivia, I swear it was John Barrowman with full on Scottish accent. I can't find the name of this show anywhere and looking at his IMDB it doesn't mention anything like it.

FAKE EDIT - I just looked at again at imdb and it's under Self! Yeah he was fully Scottish on this show https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1223178/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_120

Brundle-Fly

Sir Michael Caine dropped a few octaves around the time of Mona Lisa (1987), similarly Ray Winstone. He sounds like he has gargled a hedgehog smoothie since the 1979 days of Scum and Quadrophenia.

a duncandisorderly

early in 1993, I was doing studio sound for an Mtv show which had the then-working-together page & coverdale as guests. I went to the pre-show holding area to see what these two hairy bastards were wearing, being as I needed to mic them up for a segment.

coverdale's originally from teesside, as am I, & he'd briefly dated the older sister of a near-neighbour of mine, before he joined the stream of english vocalists going to live in LA.

so I reminded him of this, telling him I lived at the end of a row of houses opposite the library in this little town, & did he remember a lass...?

"hell aye!" he yells, laughing, & starts to tell me all about it in a voice that sounded a lot like bob mortimer.

jimmy page looked like someone had hit him with a shovel.

Jockice

Quote from: Bazooka on July 29, 2018, 05:21:40 PM
John 'Torchwood' Barrowman is the king of this, having seen him speak American in everything, I caught him on a vet/animal rescue thing and he was speaking full Scot tongue, thought I'd had a stroke.

And Sheena Easton is the queen of doing it in the opposite direction.

Captain Crunch

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on July 29, 2018, 05:10:57 PM
Thatcher - compare 1971-75 to the Iron Lady voice. A deliberate makeover.

The recent thing about the politics of accents was interesting, if totally predictable: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06fs9wz

Kane Jones

What about singers who do this? Biggest culprit is Paul Weller. Sounds all cockney in The Jam, fast forward to the likes of Changing Man and suddenly he's all gruff, bluesy and American.

Clownbaby

^ i hate this with singers. Matt Bellamy went from a total whisper voiced sort of more weasel sounding Thom Yorke/banshee wailer to a weird cod-opera Bono. I don't know what he is on but Muse just get clunkier and clunkier with each album.

mothman

Barrowman I think switches at will (I saw a documentary about his life and when he Skyped his parents - who are still in the US after emigrating there - he talks in his natural Scottish accent; he also used it in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games opening ceremony).

Gillian Anderson is all over the place, I think she changes without even realises it and only retains one accent when playing a role - if push came to shove she'd probably be considered to have a natural English accent (she started American, grew up here and ended up sounding English, then moved back to the US so started doing an American accent so as not to be picked on in high school).

Ferris

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 29, 2018, 06:00:23 PM
Sir Michael Caine dropped a few octaves around the time of Mona Lisa (1987), similarly Ray Winstone. He sounds like he has gargled a hedgehog smoothie since the 1979 days of Scum and Quadrophenia.

*steve coogan and rob brydon enter the thread, expectantly*

Clownbaby

The strangely mixed accent Chris Morris does in IT Crowd and then suddenly doesn't do

manticore

Sandi Toksvig's story about coming to Britain with a heavy New York accent and being shunned at the girl's public school she went to, seeing Brief Encounter and deciding 'that's how I'm going to speak' is a funny one.

Of course some of the people one thinks of as really quite posh, like Harold Pinter and Sheila Hancock, are basically RADA creations.

Shit Good Nose

Dave Mason spoke with his natural Midlands accent until the early 70s when he went full American with a strong lean towards Californian.  If memory serves it was a conscious change on his part.

Yorkshireman John McLaughlin's accent has been morphing since the mid 60s.  He doesn't even sound like he's from this planet any more.

Jon Anderson's an interesting one.  Had a very strong Lanc accent until the late 70s, which then slowly became one of those awful "transatlantic" generic accents with no real home, and by the late 80s it was anyone's guess.  But, since becoming a naturalised American, he's got back quite a lot of his Lanc accent again.

Then you've got posho Brit Christopher Nolan and his very American brother Jonathan (although I understand a lot of Americans think he sounds "Briddish").


Quote from: manticore on July 29, 2018, 07:10:43 PM
Sandi Toksvig's story about coming to Britain with a heavy New York accent and being shunned at the girl's public school she went to, seeing Brief Encounter and deciding 'that's how I'm going to speak' is a funny one.

The irony of that being that her New York accent now sounds terrible (as in phoney).

Clownbaby

It's so weird to me how some people will just pick up accents. One of my cousins was a teenager when she moved to Glasgow and she picked up the most exaggeratedly Glasgow accent, she still has it now.

Jack Shaftoe

I have some sympathy with this whole thing, as my family moved from Lancashire to Cornwall when I was about nine, and after one day of everyone in my new school taking the piss I decided to go for a neutral RP type accent, which I have to this day.

At the time it seemed quite sensible, but now I think what a craven little shit I was. Should have stuck it out.

Sherringford Hovis

Linsey Dawn McKenzie - worse after the plastic surgery
Sophie Dee - better after the plastic surgery

Lloyd Grossman's accent makes me want to drown him in a puddle though. Fuck's sake.


Tax dodging Tory cocksucker Gary Barlow seems to be trying to do some kind of Beatles accent.

Clownbaby

I find it a bit weird (nobody else seems to have noticed this) but in Big Bang Theory I'm sure Sheldon talks with a slightly slower more slurred voice now. I don't regularly watch Big Bang or owt and I've noticed it, but fans who I've mentioned this to don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. He definitely doesn't sound as prim and crisp as he did. Circa season 5 he starts sounding ever-so-slightly slurred and I don't know if it's an acting choice from Jim Parsons or they're trying to subtly imply that Amy Farrah Fowler is drugging him. I doubt knowing Big Bang they'd be that creative though.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Sherringford Hovis on July 29, 2018, 07:32:54 PM
Lloyd Grossman's accent makes me want to drown him in a puddle though. Fuck's sake.

In his defence, though, hasn't he always described it as a mid-atlantic accent that kept the worst of his original Boston mixed with the worst of wherever he settled in the UK?

Clownbaby


BeardFaceMan

Quote from: manticore on July 29, 2018, 07:10:43 PM
Sandi Toksvig's story about coming to Britain with a heavy New York accent and being shunned at the girl's public school she went to, seeing Brief Encounter and deciding 'that's how I'm going to speak' is a funny one.

People like Joe Lycett or Tom Allen, who clearly dont use their real accent (as I've heard them both say), where does that camp, kind of arch way of speaking come from? Are they also trying to emulate someone?

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 29, 2018, 07:47:21 PM
Tomaaarrrteau

That's how Loyd Grossman say tomato

There's another celeb who has a VERY similar accent to Grossman, but fucked if I can remember who it is now...

The Lurker

Unless there's a big North-East contingent on here, I don't suppose too many of you have seen the advert for Sunday For Sammy where Denise Welsh says in an exaggerated Geordie accent "get yaself doon to Window's shoppin' centa but hurry cos they'll gan dead fast!" I've never heard her speak like that on any TV show she's been on, so she's putting on an accent that she's lost.

And on the subject of losing a Geordie accent - Robson Green

royce coolidge

Surranne Jones when in Corrie used her normal "ey up chuck" north west accent,as the years have gone by and her success in more
respected stage and screen roles,her interview voice is now very posh and mannered,almost to Amelia Bulmore levels (Amelia was common in Corrie too but I think her poshness is real).

Jockice

Quote from: Jack Shaftoe on July 29, 2018, 07:20:49 PM
I have some sympathy with this whole thing, as my family moved from Lancashire to Cornwall when I was about nine, and after one day of everyone in my new school taking the piss I decided to go for a neutral RP type accent, which I have to this day.

At the time it seemed quite sensible, but now I think what a craven little shit I was. Should have stuck it out.

I did stick it out! My family moved from Scotland to England when I was seven and then moved house another twice in the next three years, the final time to a completely different area just before my last year at junior school. So that was four schools at which I was the only Scottish kid. Great fun as you can possibly imagine.

To this day I still have people asking why I still have a Scottish accent 45 years after moving to England. And my answer is...I dunno. But there are several possible explanations.
1) I just can't. Some people can do it and some people can't. Into the former camp I'd put a lad in the year above me at school who I bumped into in a train station about a month after he went to Sunderland Polytechnic and discovered he already had a fully-fledged Mackem accent. But he was Mr Average lookswise, which leads to:

2) For various physical reasons I was extremely unlikely to fit in anyway. So I'd just be the Scottish kid who changed his accent to try and fit in but still didn't. Plus I figured that if it added an extra bit of annoyance to those who disliked me anyway it might be worth keeping. It definitely wasn't because I wanted to stand out. I hate standing out. I really do.

3) Family reasons. Both my parents and my elder sister were and are Scots. Maybe it was just easier to keep it for home reasons. Plus on the day we left Scotland an aunt said: "Make sure you keep your accent." Maybe I thought that was an order. She died at the start of the century and one of the last things she said to me was something about being surprised that I still had my Scottish accent despite living in England so long. What, you mean I wasn't supposed to? Mind you, I once met a bloke with a strong Irish accent who had never been there in his life. But both his parents were Paddies so he'd just copied their accent.  Even I found that strange.

4) Or maybe I'm just a twat who overthinks things. In a Scottish accent.

Clownbaby

There was an episode of My Parents Are Aliens where a Scottish  lad called Trent who'd been in it from the start revealed in the final episode that he ACTUALLY WASN'T SCOTTISH AND HAD BEEN FAKING IT THE WHOLE TIME. Such a shit and pointless twist

Nowhere Man

All the Beatles, even George and Paul to a small extent lost their accents over the years, understandable since they spent a lot of time in the USA, but Ringo's weird midatlantic accent in particular irks me a bit these days, he says the word "and" very oddly, almost in a piss take sort of way. He even says "England" quite strangely in this recent-ish interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtG55zlN3L8&feature=youtu.be&t=19s

Jockice

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 29, 2018, 08:11:52 PM
There was an episode of My Parents Are Aliens where a Scottish  lad called Trent who'd been in it from the start revealed in the final episode that he ACTUALLY WASN'T SCOTTISH AND HAD BEEN FAKING IT THE WHOLE TIME. Such a shit and pointless twist

English people can't do Scottish accents. In general anyway. Probably a few actors can but for most people trying to sound Scottish consists of saying Hoots Mon/Och Aye The Noo/See You Jimmy (three things I've never ever heard a single Scottish person say in real life, except in jest) in a voice that resembles every accent on earth. Except Scottish. Yet I'm supposed to laugh/be offended depending on what reaction the person is trying to elicit, at what appears to be a bizarre Welsh/Pakistani/German crossover. I'm torn between pitying them and wanting to hit them.