Shadowing Practice: Rating Good and Terrible American Accents by British Actors - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hi!
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As a former stage actor and occasional dialect coach,
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I often get asked which British actors are the best at doing American accents.
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And recently, while watching the conclusion to Stranger Things,
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a show that features several British actors,
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it forced my brain to return to this very topic.
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And today, I'm going to show you examples,
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some good, some not so good,
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of times that British actors try to hoodwink American audiences.
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So, if you're fanatical about British versus American cultural comparisons,
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and you haven't yet subscribed to this channel, do that now!
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In the meantime, Ewan McGregor.
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I called everywhere in five states.
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I told him it was the only way to get my wife to marry me.
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I'll have the rest of my life to find out.
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It's a tough one, this.
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I love Ewan McGregor.
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I even love the film Big Fish.
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Massive fan.
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But as I was watching it,
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I did get the impression that this wasn't his real accent.
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And I don't know if it's just because I've seen him fight Anakin Skywalker as Obi-Wan Kenobi and speak like Alec Guinness.
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But some of that's coming through,
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I think, in his accent.
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I mean, go back just a second ago.
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I think he almost gives up at the end of that sentence and goes back into Obi-Wan Kenobi,
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even though he's Scottish.
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I mean, I think it is a valiant attempt at doing it
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because whenever American or British actors try to do regional accents from the other country,
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we usually completely butcher it.
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He at least has most of the vowel sounds down.
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And also, if I was too harsh to him,
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I'd be a complete hypocrite.
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Well, you don't want to find yourself out there in the woods alone at night, Lawrence.
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But I think pound for pound,
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I'd probably give Ewan a 6 out of 10.
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Is that too generous, Southerners?
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Let me know in the comments below.
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This is a rescue.
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I'm helping you escape.
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Can you fly a TIE fighter?
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What?
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No, no, no. I'm breaking you out.
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Can you fly a TIE fighter?
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I went to see this at the cinema,
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and I had no idea that John Boyega was an English actor.
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And it was kind of strange in a way,
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because it's like he's in a galaxy far, far away.
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There's absolutely no real reason for him to play with an American accent when he's British.
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Except for the fact that he's on the side of the resistance in a film franchise
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that prefers lending voices like mine to the villains.
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That said, because I walked out of the cinema not having a clue that he wasn't American,
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I think he probably did a very good job with the accent.
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And I think the mistake that a lot of British people make is that they try to overdo the R's in car.
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And I think he doesn't.
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He speaks at a sort of rapid pace.
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I'm hoping you escape.
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Can you bloody tie fighter?
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And he just seems like an American actor,
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so I think I'd give this maybe 10 out of 10.
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Of course, unlike your average Hollywood star,
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I don't have a personal trainer to help me achieve my New Year's resolutions.
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Sure, I may have just quit deep fried food for 2026,
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but given my busy schedule,
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schedule, I don't always have time to cook.
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That's where Factor comes in.
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Factor delivers fresh, never frozen,
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chef-crafted, dietitian-approved meals straight to your door.
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And they're ready to eat in just two minutes.
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It just means I have more time for important things like writing,
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editing, or returning unwanted Christmas gifts.
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And everything is designed to support real routines,
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not just some stupid rules.
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Obviously, I've been leaning toward their high protein options,
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many of which deliver 30 grams or more of complete protein.
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And everything is designed to support real routines, not complicated rules.
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I heat it, eat it,
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and get on with my day.
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Factor offers plans like high protein,
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calorie smart, GLP-1 support, low carb, and more.
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So you can choose something that fits your life instead of giving in to fried chicken.
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Head to factor75.com or click the link below
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and use the code LITPFB50 to get 50% off your first Factor box plus free breakfast for one year.
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That's code L-I-T-P-F-B-50 at factor75.com to get 50% off plus free breakfast for one year.
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Was this offer only valid for New Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase?
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The link is in the description below.
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David, sacrifice is to get anything of value.
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You have to sacrifice.
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Nothing that has meaning is easy.
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Easy doesn't enter into grown-up life.
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And here in this film,
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he's supposed to be from Chicago,
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which is where I live.
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And I don't hear too many people speaking like that.
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I think it's inconsistent.
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He goes in and out when he says the word value.
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It just goes all English.
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To get anything of value.
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This is something that on the other side of the coin,
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American actors will often do when they're doing British accents.
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They get a lot of the things down about how we speak,
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but there'll be certain vowel sounds that they just cannot let go of or they can't even hear.
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I remember when Daniel Craig went on Colbert to tell him that you're saying my name wrong.
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Daniel Craig.
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Daniel Craig.
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Ooh, I hear the difference.
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That is subtle.
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So I think that a lot of the time,
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that's part of the problem.
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The good thing, though, with Michael Caine is he gets away with it because he's Michael Caine.
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Look, man, I'm telling you right off the bat,
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I'm high maintenance, so I'm not going to tiptoe around your marriage or whatever it is without going there.
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If you want to be with me, you're with me.
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I think the biggest compliment that I can give to Kate Winslet is that she sounds more American than Jim Carrey.
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And that's because he's Canadian.
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And I think that when you listen to each and every one of the vowel sounds,
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because I think she more or less uses all of them in that,
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there's a distinction between how she would speak those with her natural British accent and how Americans would say them.
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And I think she mostly lands it pretty much perfectly.
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I mean, to be fair,
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she'd already had some experience playing an old money American in Titanic.
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She basically is American at this point.
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But I would give Dane Kate,
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she's not been knighted, but probably should be, probably 10.
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I know that, thank you.
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It's your question.
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It's not properly phrased.
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Do you understand what I'm getting at?
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I do.
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Why don't you answer it?
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Because I don't like your phrase having anything to do with the Communist Party,
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because Robert never had anything to do with the Communist Party as such.
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So here, Emily Blunt is playing Kitty Oppenheimer,
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the wife of Oppenheimer,
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and at first was unsure of what I was listening to in terms of an accent until I realised,
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oh, she's doing old money.
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She's doing mid-Atlantic American English.
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Three months ago, I was 40 years old.
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40. The accent then of prestige.
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The mid-Atlantic accent is very similar in nature to receive pronunciation British English.
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So you could argue that it's cheating,
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but I don't think it is.
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I don't think it's easy for British people to mimic Americans using an accent that's mimicking a British accent.
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It's hard for us to find those nuances,
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those parts of the accent that aren't the same as British English.
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I think, Emily, you get 9.8,
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which is still really good.
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So don't come at me in the comments, Blunt.
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Which brings us once again to the urgent realisation of just how much there is still left to own.
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Item 6 on the agenda, the meaning of life.
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Hang on, I'm going to pause.
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Did he just say a gender with an R on it.
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Okay, so there are examples of words in this country that don't have R's in which some Americans will pronounce an R.
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An example of this is the word wash or toilet.
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Some people in America in certain regions and of certain generations might pronounce these words as wash and toilet.
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But I'd be amazed if the meaning of life had that as part of their a gender in this scene.
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So I think he's doing here what I did when I first did an American accent on stage.
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I had the word sauce as in tomato sauce in my script
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and the way I pronounced it is how Americans would pronounce the word sauce as a new sauce.
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Pass me the tomato sauce.
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This is instead of saying it the way Americans usually do.
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Sauce.
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Harry you've had some thoughts on this.
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Wait a second.
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He pronounces Harry as Harry instead of Harry.
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Some energies have a spiritual sauce which act upon a person's soul.
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Hang on.
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Whoa.
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He just said the word sauce, I think, didn't he?
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A spiritual sauce.
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Is he saying sauce?
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He definitely means sauce.
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I can't believe he did the reverse of what I did.
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Now, you might say, Lawrence,
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you're taking Monty Python way too seriously.
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And I think it's a good point.
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I think when a bad accent turns up in comedy,
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it almost adds to the comedy.
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So I'm not unhappy.
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I'll give them a bit of leniency and give them three out of ten.
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Well, sometimes doctors make mistakes.
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Anna, you need to try twice as hard to fix them.
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Are you using your inhaler?
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You sure you're using it right?
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Why don't you show me how your inhaler works?
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So this is Hugh Laurie as Dr. House.
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And when I first moved to America in 2008,
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a lot of people would tell me,
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did you know that the guy who plays Dr. House is British?
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And I said, yes, we all knew Hugh Laurie decades before you Americans,
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because of Blackadder, because of Jeeves and Worcester.
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And it was as much a surprise to me
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that he was cast in a very popular show in America in the lead role.
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It's the subtle things that he does really well.
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Firstly, he's got this sort of gravelly cadence
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that really helps to sell a leading man's accent on this side of the pond.
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Doctors make mistakes.
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He hangs on to that S sound,
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which is something that certain American speakers that I've interacted with might do that if they're trying to convey a specific mood.
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I must I'd say those same Americans that came up to me
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when I first moved here would also say I didn't know he was British at first.
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That is probably an even better sign than me not detecting it.
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So I think for Hugh Laurie I couldn't give him anything other than a 10 out of 10.
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He had like the high-vis jacket and the removable hat.
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Was that for our good?
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Was that a right choice?
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I'm gonna snatch that diploma and I'm gonna run like hell out of here!
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He says that there are monsters in Hawkins.
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I have been absolutely obsessed with Stranger Things for 10 years
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because it's eerily reminiscent of the American films that I watched growing up as a child in England.
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And it still shocks me to say this,
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but the four actors that I showed you just there are all British.
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And it doesn't matter how many times I've watched it,
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I don't question their American-ness.
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It's almost like they've been living here their whole life.
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Actually, in the case of a couple of the actors,
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they did move here as children.
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When you're a child, you're a sponge that soaks up the sounds of the people that you hang around with,
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I think a bit more readily than we do as adults.
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I remember when I was at school on the playgrounds of Britain
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and some of the people that I would pretend to be would be from the American films that I was obsessed with.
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And I think
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that might get to the heart of why British actors tend
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to be noted for their ability to adopt American accents better than American actors are in the reverse scenario.
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But in this particular case,
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there are a couple of things that I was very impressed with.
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I love the way that Eddie's character successfully pronounces the word half A year and a half?
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In my experience as an actor,
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that is a vowel sound that doesn't come particularly naturally to us.
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And similarly with Holly's character,
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when she says Hawkins, she says Hawkins,
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except without that deep voice. In Hawkins.
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So, just as I would if I were reviewing the show itself,
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I'm going to have to give all four actors 10 out of 10.
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In the meantime, here are six American movies that were renamed for British audiences.
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You'll watch that video next.
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And until next time, goodbye.
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About This Lesson
This lesson focuses on the nuances of British actors performing American accents, as highlighted in a recent video featuring commentary on performances from actors such as Ewan McGregor and John Boyega. You'll practice listening for pronunciation differences, intonation variations, and cultural context embedded within their accents. By examining these performances, learners will enhance their understanding of accent differentiation and phonetics, which can significantly improve their speaking skills. Incorporating shadowing techniques allows you to closely mimic accents and intonations, refining your own English pronunciation.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Accent: A distinct way of pronouncing a language, often influenced by geography and culture.
- Dialect: A variant of a language specific to a particular region or social group.
- Hoodwink: To deceive or trick someone; in this context, it refers to British actors fooling American audiences.
- Valiant: Showing courage or determination; used here to describe an actor's attempt at an accent.
- Vowel sounds: The sounds made by vowels in speech, crucial for understanding accent variation.
- Regional accents: Accents that are characteristic of specific areas; they often vary significantly within the same language.
- Phonetics: The study of the sounds of human speech, important for learning pronunciation.
- Culture: The social behavior and norms found in human societies, which influence language usage and accents.
Practice Tips
To make the most of this lesson, consider using shadowing techniques to enhance your English language skills:
- Start Slow: Initially, play the video at a slower speed. Focus on imitating the rhythms and pauses used by the actors. This will help you catch nuances in the accent.
- Watch with Subtitles: If available, turn on English subtitles. Reading along can illuminate how words and phrases are pronounced differently in American English.
- Repeat Actively: Use a shadowing site or your own device to record your voice while shadowing the actors. Play back your recordings to pinpoint areas for improvement.
- Focus on Emphasis: Listen for which parts of phrases the actors emphasize or stress; this can differ greatly between British and American accents.
- Incorporate Cultural Context: As you practice, reflect on the cultural phrases and humor used by the actors. Understanding the background can enhance your listening and speaking skills.
Engaging with this content not only helps you learn English with YouTube effectively but also enables you to adopt elements of American vernacular in your speech. Remember to practice regularly, and enjoy the journey of mastering accents with shadow speech techniques!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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