Shadowing Practice: When British Actors Are Forced to Do American Accents! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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311 sentences
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1
Well, people talk like very slowly because it's very hot down there and I think the whole idea...
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From the South?
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Yeah, alright.
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Now can you do an American accent?
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Not after my one experience doing it.
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I did it for a TV thing and for some reason it came out incredibly low and incredibly slow.
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British actors are famous for mastering American accents, but they don't always get it right.
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From seriously convincing to hilariously terrible, these attempts prove that sounding American is harder than it looks.
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You do Sylvester Stallone, don't you?
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Uh, yeah, yeah, I do.
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I like to do Sylvester Stallone as Hamlet.
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Sylvester Stallone as Hamlet.
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To be or not to be, whether it's nobler in the mind to shove the slings and arrows of outrageous support,
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or to take a side winder helicopter and napalm an entire village.
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I think everyone has an impression of Christopher Walken, because he's just such an easy kind of...
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You know, I feel like what this show needs is more cowbell.
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It depends on what you like me to say.
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It is very clear that learning an American accent is no joke.
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Many take years to master it completely, and some just don't get there at all, like James Corden, for instance.
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But my main worry is it's the first time I've ever done an American accent, so I'm playing an American, and that is, that's filling me with some things.
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Now when you say an American, that is not a preview...
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That is not a preview of your American accent, is it?
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Yes it was.
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OK, we need to work on this.
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All right, me lovelies, I'm an American.
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That's it, isn't it?
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Even the greats like Hugh Laurie struggle with some words.
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He did eight seasons of Doctor House and still was afraid of saying this word.
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There are a few.
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Honestly, the one that makes my heart sink when I say it in a script surprisingly enough, is New York.
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New York?
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Yeah.
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Really?
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Well, you could say that.
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I mean...
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Um, I find it really...
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I-and I-I often I'll reach a point where I go, could we-could we make it Manhattan?
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Some English people have trouble saying this one.
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Why do you-how do you say that?
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Squirrel.
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Well, that's fine.
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How would you say that as an American?
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Give me the American accent of that.
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Oh, no. Come on.
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Um, squirrel.
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That's right!
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Yeah?
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One-one syllable.
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Squirrel.
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British actors have a long history in Hollywood.
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They go there in search of better opportunities, but those chances are very limited if they can only do a British accent.
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Okay, so I'm talking to you really fast, okay?
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Okay, you gave me a clue.
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I'm going to give you another clue.
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They're very, very fast talking, and I played someone from here.
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She was married to the ex-president. That place.
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This one, it takes place on the subway.
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Subway musician walks into E-Train with guitar and neck harmonica.
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Passenger grabbing him by the wrist says, I will give you $20 out of my wallet to not do what you're about to do.
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Next one is middle-aged guy in a bar.
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Middle-aged guy in a bar.
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Yeah, my oldest lives in LA.
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He's one of those TikTok douchebags.
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These mini games, where actors do different accents, are always a blast to watch.
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Especially if they are horrible.
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Tom Felton seems he got the hang of it.
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Surely not from Harry Potter.
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Okay, now I want to see if you can do a New Jersey accent.
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Are you ready to hear Tom try the New Jersey accent?
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What are you throwing me into?
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What's on these cards?
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Okay, here you go.
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In a New Jersey accent.
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Card number one.
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Sup, baby?
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Wanna smush?
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All right.
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Is that right?
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Is it smush or smush?
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Smush?
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Smush?
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I don't...
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Okay, number two.
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Alright.
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Yo, dude, that chick's a grenade.
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Kelly Clarkson also does this accent game on her show, and this, surprisingly, went very well.
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Would you be willing to read the teeth to break in the accent of my choosing?
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Okay, let's see how I do.
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It's been a pleasure to have you watching this program on your telly.
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Between bites of burgers and pizza, try not to change the channel.
91
Oh my god, Valley Girl!
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Because it's like just a minute or two before we're back, that's gonna be like just so cool, you wouldn't believe it, I just can't even.
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The Valley Girl accent originated in California in the 1970s, but got very popular with teenagers because of the film Clueless, which released in 1995.
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To, um, Callie from the Valley.
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Who's like this.. she's like this whole, like, situation.
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That was amazing.
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Wow, that's actually very good.
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Thank you.
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Yeah, we had, like, a really good time.
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I got so close to, like, getting Jai to buy me, like, a $700 air conditioning unit.
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I, like, got the guy to help me, he was freaking out.
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It was awesome.
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Did you base that on someone you know?
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I like love Clueless.
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Michael Caine has starred in only a few films where he had to do an American accent.
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You would think that he's not good at it and you would be wrong.
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He also does impressions, like this one of John Wayne.
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Someone put up $100,000 for John Wayne to do To Be or Not To Be from Hamlet.
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And John came up and they gave him a speech.
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And he didn't know what it was, you know.
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So he went, to be or not to be? That is the question.
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Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer this length in our own? Who wrote this shit?
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Some celebrities claim that they know how to do the accents, and yet fail miserably when they try.
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Ricky Gervais did as Ricky usually does and made a mockery of the whole thing.
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OK.
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Most impression in 30 seconds, I'll just name names.
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Ready?
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Start the clock of Robert De Niro.
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Oh, are you looking at me?
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Stop the timer, stop the timer.
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What?
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That was good.
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That was good.
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No, stop the timer.
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I'm going to let you try it again.
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I'm going to let you start it again.
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No. Oh, you're looking at me?
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That's what he says.
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That is what De Niro says.
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No, he says, you're talking to me.
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Yeah.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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I'll be back.
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Uh, Winston Churchill.
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Oh, I'll fight them on the beaches, I will.
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Kim Kardashian.
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Oh, look at these!
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Alright, Bill Clinton.
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Oh, go and get that dress, could I please?
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Christopher Walken.
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I shoved a clock up me arse!
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When Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey were together promoting their film The Gentleman, they were asked to swap their lines from previous films.
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As you can expect, it didn't disappoint.
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The first one is Hugh's line from Love Actually.
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Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, who do you have to screw around here to get a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit?
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This line here, this is from Matthews.
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All right, all right, all right!
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Yes!
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Finally, yes!
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That's it again!
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I'll be driving in the car, and I'll see Home Depot, and, um, and then suddenly I'm like, uh, like, Bob, you know, um...
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Robert De Niro.
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Yeah.
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I gotta...
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I gotta get some screws.
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The Downton Abbey cast, Hugh, Michelle and Alan were asked to do a scene but with a twist.
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All of the scene had to be in an American accent instead of British.
158
It may be harder than cashing Wavell's cheque, but does that mean we shouldn't try?
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Oh, no. We will build.
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We'll even make money for the estate, but we won't destroy what people love about this place.
161
Do you think that's wrong?
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No, it's not wrong.
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Hey, let's just forget about this.
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Mary, who are you wearing?
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Tom Holland is also able to switch between his accents.
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He was hilariously pranked during a Spider-Man interview and was told to stop acting British.
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Why are you pretending to be British for the interview?
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I watched the preview of the movie and you were American.
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Right.
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No, but I am British.
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How is that possible?
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I just do an American accent when I play Spider-Man.
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How is that possible?
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Well, I just did it.
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Apart from his acting, Tom Hiddleston is widely known for his vast amount of voices and impersonations he could do.
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He did Al Pacino and De Niro in front of De Niro.
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What if you do got me boxed in?
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I'm not going to put you down.
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Moving face to face.
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Yeah.
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But I will not hesitate
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Not for a second So you never wanted a real attack life and and Bob may I call you Bob?
183
Bob says what's that barbecues and ball games?
184
Yeah
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And I said to him I said so wait how
186
and who are you playing cuz I'm playing F Scott Fitzgerald and I know Corey Stoll's playing on his Hemingway, and we're all playing figures of history and he went oh Oh no no no no,
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I'm from now, I go back in time.
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There's a time machine.
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It's kind of cool and it's kind of woody and it's kind of awesome.
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Before the popular series Bridgerton was created, Rage's first job was in America and he had to learn everything from scratch by himself.
191
My first job, we were shooting in Louisiana, in this country.
192
I was on plantations in Louisiana for three months shooting Roots in 2015.
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Uh-huh.
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And so I was doing South Carolina when I was in Roos.
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And, like, I remember I learned to do that because I went and I ordered a coffee, and they were like, oh, my God, he black and he British!
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Come over here!
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Say strawberry!
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Say banana!
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But at least you don't say orange, which is sort of...
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I do say orange.
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What do you mean?
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Wait, do we have the same accent?
203
Well, no, because you're from England.
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Say.. say water.
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Water.
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No. Water.
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Water.
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There you go.
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Yes.
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also asked to play the accent game.
211
They were not prepared at all, but still sounded half-decent.
212
Hey buddy, can I get an order of mozzarella sticks please?
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Hey buddy, can I get an order?
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Can I get an order of mo- Hey buddy, can I get an order of mozzarella sticks please?
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Hey buddy man, can I get an order of mozzarella sticks please?
216
Booyah.
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Booyah.
218
Booyah.
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Do you really say booyah?
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I do, that's an American statement.
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Really?
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Okay, alright, I gotta learn that one.
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Booyah.
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Booyah.
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What the hell are these places?
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Are they restaurants?
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Gerald Butler has a lot of experience with dialect coaches.
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His natural accent is Scottish and that is hard to mask.
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What you do is you work with a dialect coach and literally you sit and you run sounds.
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So you'll be like, it's for your eye.
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Because in Scotland we say bright light, we go eye.
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So, you know in America they go bright light.
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So you'll go it's a bright light on a fine night.
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But the thing is there's the same rule for every accent and so I is a certain sound in America, and ooh for moon, and in Scotland we go moon.
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Alice Eve lived in LA during her childhood because her parents moved there for work.
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Conan melted when he heard her accent.
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So where was this, what area of the United States was this?
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In Los Angeles.
239
Oh, so you were speaking with a Los Angeles accent for a while.
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Yeah.
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So what kind of, what stuff were you doing?
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And you give me an idea of just, was your whole...
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So just like, you just talk like that instead of talking like me.
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That's weird.
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You can just change like that.
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Wow.
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That's like peer pressure as a child that'll do that to you.
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Gary Oldham is another one that can do good impressions, like we have seen with the De Niro one.
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These actors who do a great job with accents are the ones that study the voice breakdown, including rhythm.
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And if you've got Italian, New York, it sort of always goes down.
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It's always like that.
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It's a falling thing, you know?
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Forget about it.
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Where an Irishman might say, hey, forget about it.
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I showed up early on, you know, sounding like Joe Pesci and sort of quite excited about doing a lot of Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and with a lot of hammer,
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which you can get very broad shit.
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I should be fantastic.
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I'm gonna have a great time And uh, yeah, and then uh, and uh,
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was told quite promptly that wrong show Australian or a bloody game where you toss bloody balls into bloody baskets Yes,
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they get it.
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Oh, New York.
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New York.
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New York.
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Oh!
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It's Fox conformity!
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Oh!
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Matthew Rhys had a theory on why the British had more means to learn the American accents.
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Although there are Americans who learn British accents, there are far more Brits that do it.
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I do believe that the amount of American television we grew up watching, and as young kids going out into the yard to play Starsky
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and Hutch or The A-Team or Airwolf or any of those, you know, kids growing up, Whereas kids in America don't go out to the school yard to play Downton Abbey, which is seemingly the only thing that...
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I did.
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Well, yes, of course.
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I was taunted and beaten.
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You were like, fetch me another pheasant, boy!
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I wouldn't have got the part if I couldn't do a South Central accent somewhat.
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So, like, I was infatuated with Deaf Comedy Jam when I was a kid.
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Okay.
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So I would learn, like, all different accents of the comedians.
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And I would love, like, Boys in the Hood and all John Singleton's movies.
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Yeah.
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But Dub C really taught me just the essence of being a kid from L.A., you know, how to stand and how to walk.
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He would always say, you know, you could say shit a certain way or you could say shit a certain way.
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I lived in America for so long and I had played Americans.
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I think my R's, my R became a little harder.
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Jason Isaacs, or better known as Lucius Malfoy, spent some time teaching Jimmy how to do different accents like Liverpool and Manchester.
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Of course, he needs much more practice.
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What you may not know is in Britain, you open your mouth, everybody knows not only where you're from, but where you're from in terms of education, how you're trying to be perceived.
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Because I've heard you in Liverpool, and what you're doing is the Beatles.
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Now, the Beatles talk like that originally, but then the ones that sound like they came from California, so they started leaning back on it.
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But that's not a Liverpool accent.
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So let's start with Liverpool, where I can find it.
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Liverpool, here we go.
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One of the haute cuisine dishes you get is chicken and chips.
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Can you do chicken and chips?
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Chicken and chips.
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Chicken and chips.
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Chicken and chips.
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Finally, we can say that it was a very good move for the British to go into Hollywood.
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Nowadays we cannot go by without them.
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The talent pool in the UK is so large.
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The only actor with the skill and sense that he needed to carry off a New Yorker book in action, that would be Richard over there, right there.
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Oh my goodness.
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Pray silence.
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Well, well, well.
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Hi.
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Sounded...
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How are things?
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How are things?
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How are things?
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Oh, that's interesting.
311
How a thing.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “When British Actors Are Forced to Do American Accents!”. This video has 311 sentences and 2658 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:10. The speaker talks at a natural 175 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding. 58 of its 311 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| accent noun | /ækˈsɛnt/ | A higher-pitched or stronger (louder or longer) articulation of a particular syllable of a word or phrase in order to distinguish it from the others or to… |
| booyah | /ˈbuːˌjɑː/ | Expressing excitement and anticipation. |
| smush verb | /smʌʃ/ | To mash or push down or in; compress |
| mozzarella noun | /mɑt.səˈɹɛl.ə/ | Soft Italian or Italian-style cheese made from cow's or buffalo's milk and commonly used as a pizza topping and in salads etc. |
| timer noun | /ˈtaɪmɚ/ | A device used to measure amounts of time. |
| squirrel noun | /ˈskwɪ.ɹ(ə)l/ | Any of the rodents of the family Sciuridae. |
| preview noun | /ˈpɹiːvjuː/ | An experience of something in advance. |
| hilariously adverb | In a hilarious manner; so as to amuse greatly. | |
| subway noun | /ˈsʌbˌweɪ/ | An underground railway, especially for mass transit of people in urban areas. |
| surprisingly adverb | /səˈpɹaɪzɪŋli/ | In a way that causes surprise because it is unexpected, or unusual. |
| clue noun | /kluː/ | Information which may lead one to a certain point or conclusion. |
| biscuit noun | /ˈbɪs.kɪt/ | A small, flat, baked good which is either hard and crisp or else soft but firm; a cookie. |
| cheque noun | /t͡ʃɛk/ | A written order directing a bank to pay money to a person or entity. |
| conformity noun | /kənˈfɔːmɪti/ | The state of things being similar or identical. |
| cowbell noun | /ˈkaʊˌbɛl/ | A bell worn by cows; sometimes with an ornate strap. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| carry off verb | To transport away. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come over verb | To affect in a sudden, unprecedented or surprising manner; to overwhelm a person's ordinarily contrary impulse. | |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Why do you-how do you say that?
- What are you throwing me into?
- Did you base that on someone you know?
- Do you think that's wrong?
- Mary, who are you wearing?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were asked · was told · was created |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've ever done · It's been · has starred |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | orange, which is · Abbey, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 56 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: smush /smʌʃ/, shove /ʃʌv/, plantation /plænˈteɪʃən/, shave /ˈʃeɪ̯v/, musician /mjuˈzɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: mozzarella /mɑt.səˈɹɛl.ə/, surprisingly /səˈpɹaɪzɪŋli/, conformity /kənˈfɔːmɪti/, harmonica /ˌhɑɹˈmɑ.nɪ.kə/, originate /əˈɹɪd͡ʒɪneɪt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like accent, booyah, smush.
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.