62 replies to this topic

[DaveBond21]

It has occurred to me that Daniel Craig was either asked to, or decided to ditch his own Cheshire (North West accent) to portray Bond, becoming the first to do so since Lazenby sounded like Connery for the role.

Does anyone think Daniel should have used his own accent for the role, instead of "doing the Bond accent"???

[sharpshooter]

I thought he did use his normal voice for the role.

[DaveBond21]

I thought he did use his normal voice for the role.

Nope. He has a Cheshire accent, similar to Lancashire. For the part, he adopted a posh English accent, what the Americans wrongly call a "British accent".

Not much like his real voice, sadly.

[Auric64]

I find that strange, because every interview I`ve seen with Craig, (be it on set or in interviews after the film had hit the cinemas) his voice has remained the same, (IMO).

Many rural English actors have adopted "posh accents" in the past, in an effort to improve their voice, (and their lot), Roger Moore being one of them, (he hailed from Stockwell, South London). He would have had a much rougher accent growing up, before becoming an actor and changing his accent to get better parts.

I don`t think this applies in Craig`s case, though. Not every northerner adopts the "ay op, chuck, what`s thy doin`?" accent in real life, unless it`s called for.

Best

Andy

[dinovelvet]

I thought he did use his normal voice for the role.

Nope. He has a Cheshire accent, similar to Lancashire. For the part, he adopted a posh English accent, what the Americans wrongly call a "British accent".

Not much like his real voice, sadly.

I detected a line here and there in CR where I felt he was poshing it up a bit, the most obvious example to me is at the beginning where he says "I know where you keep your gun", with the know sounding like a posh neeeehw, but I dunno, I think these days he just talks like that. Like Brosnan talks in that mid-Atlantic way since he lives in Malibu, Craig has probably developed a more Londony voice over the years.

[DaveBond21]

Like Brosnan talks in that mid-Atlantic way since he lives in Malibu, Craig has probably developed a more Londony voice over the years

Fair point.


But I bet that playing Ted Hughes in Sylvia, with that Yorkshire accent, was easier for him than the "Bond accent" he does in CR.

[marktmurphy]

I thought he did use his normal voice for the role.

Nope. He has a Cheshire accent, similar to Lancashire. For the part, he adopted a posh English accent, what the Americans wrongly call a "British accent".

Not much like his real voice, sadly.

It's exactly like his real voice. I've never heard him speak any differently offscreen and only occasionally onscreen (American accent etc.) over the last ten years.

Tom Baker's from Liverpool, but he doesn't 'put a voice on': he speaks as you hear him.

[spynovelfan]

Surely all of the Bond actors have modified their voices somewhat, along with a lot else? It's called acting! Yes, you can hear Connery's Scottish, but it's still a modified version of his own accent. Moore changed his over the years, as did Dalton (and you can hear him slipping in a few places: 'nasty', famously) and Brosnan: none of these actors used the accents they grew up with for Bond. Craig's voice is a lot like Dalton's, I think: he now has an RP accent, but occasionally you can hear his original accent coming through. In The Mother, he sounds a bit too posh to be the rough Darren - and almost exactly like he sounds in CR.

[00Twelve]

Dave, didn't you say that a Cheshire dialect is akin to Daphne's on Frasier? Or Nick the hair guy on What Not To Wear (American)? If that's indeed the case, I can totally understand his adoption of a more posh, received pronunciation. (No disrespect to Cheshirians!)

[Brock Samson]

Dave, didn't you say that a Cheshire dialect is akin to Daphne's on Frasier? Or Nick the hair guy on What Not To Wear (American)? If that's indeed the case, I can totally understand his adoption of a more posh, received pronunciation. (No disrespect to Cheshirians!)

Not familiar with Nick but Cheshire is not like Daphne (whose accent was a nice try but not great by any stretch), who's supposed to be from the Manchester area. Jane Leeves is from Ilford in Essex, an accent about a million miles from the average 'Northern' accent.

Many americans are surprised by the amount of accents in the UK, I find, particularly by how close - geographically - they are. Manchester's not all that far from Liverpool, but there's a very distinct difference. As for dialect, there are so many variations throughout regions, never mind the entire UK.

[00Twelve]

Oh yeah, there are a ton, and it's funny that most universities in the US teach acting students like me "Standard English" and "Cockney." Lol. So Jane Leeves was attempting Mancunian? I used to think Nick was Liverpudlian, but with my being from the US, I didn't want to make an assumption because I know there are somewhat similar dialects that a basic American with no experience in dialect study might confuse.

In any case, I've listened to recordings of people from the Chester area for dialect study, and my judgement on Dan's situation remains.

[MHazard]

Craig is an actor and a very good one and I imagine he made a conscious choice as to the appropriate voice to use for Bond. In the movie Infamous, Craig plays a midwestern American, one of the In Cold Blood killers and he nails a mid-western accent. I'm sure he gave thought as to which voice to use. As an American, I'm not able to differentiate between regions so much, but I can recognize Sean's scottish burr, Ringo's Liverpool accent (in the Beatles movies) and stage cockney from Mary Poppins. Craig's choice worked for me.

[commanderblond]

Dave, didn't you say that a Cheshire dialect is akin to Daphne's on Frasier? Or Nick the hair guy on What Not To Wear (American)? If that's indeed the case, I can totally understand his adoption of a more posh, received pronunciation. (No disrespect to Cheshirians!)

Daphne from Fraiser if supposed to be from Manchester, which, although in the county of Lancashire, is also borderd with the county of Cheshire, so the two accents would be similar. However, in reality, the accent Jane Leeves (the actress who played Daphne) adopted for the role is about as close to Mancunian as Sean Connery's is to Roger Moore's. (Leeves was born in London and raised in the southern England county of Sussex).

If anything, Daphne's accent was more akin to a soft Yorkshire accent. And no self respecting Yorkshireman would ever allow himself to sound like a Lancastrian. Since the War of the Roses, it's just not the done thing.

If you want an example of how badly Hollywood understands the myriad number of differnt British accents, in one episode of Friaser, Daphne's brother came to stay. He was played by an American actor, who played the role in full-blown Dick Van-Dyke in Mary Poppins-style Cockney. Yet, was supposed to be from Manchester as well.

Oh, and for the record, Daniel Craig doesn't use Received Pronounciation. He uses a more or less neutral English accent. Typically, RP was used by the BBC until fairly recently, as well as being taught in Public Schools. It's the rather tourtured accent used by the Royal Family and has it's roots in Southern Midlands English. Though, ironically, as Bond went to incredibly posh Public School Fettes, he might well have an RP accent. Which woud be a dead giveaway in the world of international espionage.

[Mr. Wint]

I noticed Daniel Craig has a strange way of saying the word "home" (sounds like "hem"). Is that his original accent?

[jaguar007]

So judging by the accent, what part of England was Keanu Reeves Johnathan Harker from Dracula supposed to be freom?

[Royal Dalton]

Legend has it, he grew up in the same street as Bert from Mary Poppins.

[commanderblond]

So judging by the accent, what part of England was Keanu Reeves Johnathan Harker from Dracula supposed to be freom?

Yes, that was a particularly poor example. As was John Lithgow in Cliffhanger. Abso-bloody-lutely terrible.

[doublenoughtspy]

Lazenby did have a dialog coach, who was there for Ilse Steppat as well - but he was not trying to sound like Connery - he was just softening his Australian accent.

In the audio interview he did for the open end interview record, and in his appearence on the Tonight Show - he sounds exactly like he does in the movie.

I think people get a little confused by the fact that we hear recent interviews with these Bond actors and yes they do sound different after a number of decades.

Craig sounds like he did in the press interviews he did before, during, and after Bond.

[commanderblond]

One of my favourite bad British accents movies is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. You've got Lord Locksley, as played by Brian Blessed (HellOOOO!), whose two sons both sound remarkably trans-atlantic. Well, Robin does. Will Scarlett sounds like Christian Slater doing a poor impersonation of cockney rhyming slang - an accent he'd later use to brilliant affect in the first Austin Powers movie.

Little John and his missus both sound like they're from the West Country (Oo-arr, moi dear). Maid Marian sounds quite a lot like an American. She also has a blind man-servant who appears to be from 'dahn saaf'. Friar Tuck, meanwhile, is again from the West Country, via Canada. Oh yes, and the King of England, Richard the Lionheart, who, though born in Oxford, was actually French, sounds like he's from Edinburgh.

The best bit in the film though, has absouletly nothing to do with accents. It's to do with geography. Having arrived at Dover at dawn, Robin Hood and Azeem ride north to Nottingham and arrive later that morning. That's 215 miles. On horseback. Since Azeem is a Moor, he has to pray toward Mecca at regular intervals through the day, and gosh darnit, if it ain't that time already. Somehow, arriving at the East-to-West coast running Hadrian's Wall (a further 195 miles north of Nottingham), Azeem want's to know which way to turn.

Robin manfully clambers onto said wall and points purposefully south.

Did anybody who worked on this film have a map?

[dee-bee-five]

It has occurred to me that Daniel Craig was either asked to, or decided to ditch his own Cheshire (North West accent) to portray Bond, becoming the first to do so since Lazenby sounded like Connery for the role.

Does anyone think Daniel should have used his own accent for the role, instead of "doing the Bond accent"???

He was using his own accent. Cheshire IS posh (the accent is quite unlike that of nearby Lancashire; as I type this, I'm sitting in the centre of Chester, so I should know). And Timothy Dalton's RADA tones used throughout his career - despite a couple of slips here and there - are hardly his native accent.

Edited by dee-bee-five, 18 April 2007 - 06:00 PM.

[dee-bee-five]

One of my favourite bad British accents movies is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. You've got Lord Locksley, as played by Brian Blessed (HellOOOO!), whose two sons both sound remarkably trans-atlantic. Well, Robin does. Will Scarlett sounds like Christian Slater doing a poor impersonation of cockney rhyming slang - an accent he'd later use to brilliant affect in the first Austin Powers movie.

While amusing, this oft-repeated accusation levelled at Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is most unfair. The truth is, the variety of accents heard from the English cast members in the movie are no more authentic to how people would have spoken at that time than the American ones.

[Zorin Industries]

He used his own voice.

Watch any of his non-dialect parts and that's quite apparent...

And good actors can do whatever accent they like.

Edited by Zorin Industries, 18 April 2007 - 05:49 PM.

[Royal Dalton]

Friar Tuck, meanwhile, is again from the West Country, via Canada.

They offered that part to Richard Griffiths first, but he turned it down, because he didn't want to get typecast playing fat men!

[Santa]

Friar Tuck, meanwhile, is again from the West Country, via Canada.

They offered that part to Richard Griffiths first, but he turned it down, because he didn't want to get typecast playing fat men!

ROFLMAO!!

[00Twelve]

He used his own voice.

Watch any of his non-dialect parts and that's quite apparent...

And good actors can do whatever accent they like.

Indeed.

[Jim]

Daphne (whose accent was a nice try but not great by any stretch), who's supposed to be from the Manchester area.

Is that what it was meant to be? Really? How very odd.

I'm not sure what I assumed it was, but I would never have guessed at that.

Mr Craig sounds exactly like he did in Layer Cake and all his interviews. Lovely.

[Vauxhall]

Friar Tuck, meanwhile, is again from the West Country, via Canada.

They offered that part to Richard Griffiths first, but he turned it down, because he didn't want to get typecast playing fat men!

Never knew that. That is truly brilliant!

[kitt22]

NO, NO, NO... where you got that idea from i don't know. Daniel Craig is from Cheshire- HOWEVER he has always had a slightly posh accent whith only hints to his northern roots.

Watch any interview or past film and you'll fing the same accent as in Casino Royale.

I've met the man and let me assure you he ain't putting it on.

And as for your claim that he's the first one since Lazenby what about Brosnan!!! He was constantly masking his Irish twang in every of his performances.

Edited by kitt22, 19 April 2007 - 03:06 PM.

[commanderblond]

One of my favourite bad British accents movies is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. You've got Lord Locksley, as played by Brian Blessed (HellOOOO!), whose two sons both sound remarkably trans-atlantic. Well, Robin does. Will Scarlett sounds like Christian Slater doing a poor impersonation of cockney rhyming slang - an accent he'd later use to brilliant affect in the first Austin Powers movie.

While amusing, this oft-repeated accusation levelled at Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is most unfair. The truth is, the variety of accents heard from the English cast members in the movie are no more authentic to how people would have spoken at that time than the American ones.

That is rather the point I was making. There are several characters in the film played by British actors who had accents which were just as much out of place for the area and time the film was set in, as anything Keving Costner could muster. I wasn't singling out the American or Canadian actors, as you'll see further down my original post.

That said, I do actually rather like the film, for all it's faults. There are many films and TV shows which I'll quite happilly criticise, while loving them all the same. And yes, that even extends to 007.

Friar Tuck, meanwhile, is again from the West Country, via Canada.

They offered that part to Richard Griffiths first, but he turned it down, because he didn't want to get typecast playing fat men!

Yeah, that worked out well, didn't it?

[DaveBond21]

Dave, didn't you say that a Cheshire dialect is akin to Daphne's on Frasier? Or Nick the hair guy on What Not To Wear (American)? If that's indeed the case, I can totally understand his adoption of a more posh, received pronunciation. (No disrespect to Cheshirians!)

Well, plenty of the people I know from Cheshire sound like Daniel does in the Bond press conference (especially his opening line). Sometimes his real accent slips out - remember "Our Friends in the North"? He used his own accent in that show, plus interviews surrounding it, at the time.

If he sounds the same as Bond in interviews, then he is putting that accent on full-stop, not just for the movie. I did it myself, and still do sometimes - people are often surprised that I am a Geordie. Rowan Atkinson is too, and he can still do it when asked to, but he ditches it for his work and interviews.

But when a Northerner gets angry, their original accent always comes out.