American Accent Quotes & Sayings

The American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth — Rudyard Kipling

My grandma said - when I was really young and I'd sing along to the radio - why do you sing in an American accent? I guess it was because a lot of the music I was listening to had American vocalists. — Emma Watson

I learned by watching my favorite shows. I would just rewind and say the words back, until they sounded right to me. I never studied the American accent, in terms of getting a teacher or taking phonetics classes. I've always been a good mimic. It really wasn't that hard for me. — Adelaide Kane

I was very nervous about the accent. I was very nervous about being an American. — Janet McTeer

I once said, "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." When Bobby Jindal entered the Republican campaign, my comment should have been covered again, more prominently. I mean, Jindal is not Native American, he's a real Indian. — Joe Biden

My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters. — Rebel Wilson

My natural accent is American. I chose to speak with a U.K. accent when I was about to enter the final year at drama school in London. I was going to try to find a way to stay in the U.K. after I finished college and could not imagine trying to live and get work there with an American accent. — Jennifer Ehle

When I'm working in America, I wake up with an American accent and stay with it all day till makeup comes off. I just want everyone to be at ease, and not have the show's creators think, 'Oh my god, he's so English, why did we hire him?' — Damian Lewis

No, but I am,' Elliot says, quick as a flash. 'That's why I need Penny's help.' 'Oh.' Dad frowns and scratches his head. He doesn't look convinced at all. 'Well, when you've sorted your French crisis, come down and have some breakfast. I'm making eggs over easy,' he says in an American accent, 'and we need to talk about New York.' 'Will do,' I call over my shoulder as Elliot and I race up the second flight of stairs. As soon as we're in my room, I shut the door tight. 'Why didn't you tell me?' Elliot says. 'I was too embarrassed.' I sink down on to — Zoe Sugg

I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away. — NoViolet Bulawayo

When I was about five, I could do a vaguely decent American accent - straight through kind of decent - and 'Hercules' needed some kids. I definitely wasn't a good actor. — Rose McIver

Don't let the American accent fool you. I am British. — Natalie Massenet

I like everything European. Even my GPS has a British accent - it's way less annoying than the American one. — Rachel Bilson

Most Australians who've got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies. — Jacki Weaver

French name, English accent, American school. Anna confused. — Stephanie Perkins

I do one accent - my own. I can make it louder or quieter. That is the sum total of my vocal range. I thought I could do an American accent until I tried it in front of an American - the expression of horror is still burnt onto my retinas. — John Oliver

Reality is always separate from the ideal; but in Trinidad this fantasy is a form of masochism and is infinitely more cheating than the fantasy which makes the poor delight in films about rich or makes the English singer use and American accent. — V.S. Naipaul

Most of the roles that I go for are Americans, so the first thing I had to do was pin down the American accent - which is obviously in 'Blue Crush 2.' — Sasha Jackson

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes. — Jose Andres

My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler. — John Oliver

When I speak to people from Britain, that's when I feel like a fake, speaking with an American accent. — Matthew Rhys

Refugees such as ourselves could never dare question the Disneyland ideology followed by most Americans, that theirs was the happiest place on earth. But Dr. Hedd was beyond reproach, for he was an English immigrant. His very existence as such validated the legitimacy of the former colonies, while his heritage and accent triggered the latent Anglophilia and inferiority complex found in many Americans. Dr. Hedd was clearly aware of his privilege and was amused at the discomfort he was causing his American hosts. It — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Social scientists have written papers analyzing Eshelman's every move in there, including the strange detail that the more brutally he behaved, the more American South his accent sounded. — Jon Ronson

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that. — Orlando Bloom

I've played American characters so many times now, it's so natural to me. But when I play American, I stay in the American accent from the minute I get the job till the minute I wrap. — Gregg Sulkin

I'm the only one in my family with an American accent. — Lola Kirke

It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do. — Freddie Highmore

When I first tried the American accent, for a moment I thought I could never be an actor because I just could not do it. But then I thought, 'Okay, it'll just be something that I work at until I get it.' — Margot Robbie

I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before. — Robert Pattinson

In England, we're around so much American culture and TV anyway, so it's an accent that's always in our ear. — Jamie Blackley

Good day, ladies," he said with a distinctly American accent when all the women were above decks and the hatches closed. With a grin that took some of the edge off his fierce looks, he surveyed the crowd and added, "We've come to rescue you."
His words were so unexpected, so completely self-assured that Sara bristled. After all his blatant methods of intimidation, after he'd stood there surveying the women like cattle before the slaughter, he had the audacity to say such a thing!
"Is that what they're calling thievery, pillage, and rape these days?" she snapped. — Sabrina Jeffries

I had a dialect coach to get an American accent, and then another dialect coach to come off it a bit. There is something deep and mysterious in the voice when it isn't too high-pitched American. — Archie Panjabi

People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way. — Stewart Copeland

I love rapping. I do. My styling's similar to Missy Elliott - I think she's so dope. In a weird way, that's how I first learned the American accent: doing American rap songs. — Rebel Wilson

Whenever I'm in the U.K., people say I have an American accent. Which is, obviously, funny. — Zedd

The door opened. A guy came in. Busy, bustling, sixty-something, medium size, a gray suit, a tight waistband, a warm and friendly face. Pink and round. Lots of energy, and the start of a smile. A guy who got things done, with a lot of charm. Like a salesman. Something complicated. Like a financial instrument, or a Rolls-Royce automobile. "I'm sorry," the guy said. To Sinclair only. "I didn't know you had company." American. An old-time Yankee accent. No one spoke. Then Sinclair said, "Excuse me. Sergeant Frances Neagley and Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, meet Mr. Rob Bishop, CIA head of station at the Hamburg consulate." "I just did a drive-by," Bishop said. "On the parallel street. The kid's bedroom. The lamp has moved in the window. — Lee Child

I never worked with a dialogue coach before, but I'd hate it if an American did a British accent and didn't do it well. It would be insulting. — Tracey Ullman

To be honest, it's easier for me to speak with an American accent. — Radha Mitchell

I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture. — Idris Elba

I could do an American accent, if I were immersed in the accent, meaning if I were living back in Los Angeles and rehearsing and auditioning the whole time. — Ioan Gruffudd

Ifemelu decided to stop faking an American accent on a sunlit day in July, the same day she met Blaine. It was convincing, the accent. She had perfected, from careful watching of friends and newscasters, the blurring of the t, the creamy roll of the r, the sentences starting with "so," and the sliding response of "oh really," but the accent creaked with consciousness, it was an act of will. It took an effort, the twisting of lip, the curling of tongue. If she were in a panic, or terrified, or jerked awake during a fire, she would not remember how to produce those American sounds. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I am trying to make my accent so it won't bother anyone, but I am not going to drive myself crazy trying to pretend I am an American girl when I am from Colombia. — Shakira

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit. — Martin Henderson

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and white
bread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking English
without an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives.
The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can. — Jonathan Safran Foer

It's actually reassuring to see people struggling to do our accent instead of us constantly trying to emulate British or American accents, which we are always asked to do. — Martin Henderson

There's this accent that I think everybody has when they grow up going to an international school. It's a mix of not quite English, not quite American. When I moved to L.A., it just went completely American. — Daniela Ruah

Let me say with a Georgia accent that we cannot solve this problem if it requires a diplomatic passport to claim the rights of an American citizen. — Dean Rusk

Suddenly, four or five soldiers with round helmets and guns in hand enter the courtyard. One of them, presumably the commander, knocks hard on the door while shouting, with a strong Yankee accent: 'We are American soldiers ... Are there any Germans here?' His manner is so imperious and sure, you would think he had already won the war. We greet them with open arms. Their confidence is so contagious that we consider the Liberation to be already accomplished. As if the entire German army were obliterated in only one night. — Mary Louise Roberts

Johnson's voting record - a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day - was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation - any civil rights legislation. In Senate and House alike, his record was an unbroken one of votes against every civil rights bill that had ever come to a vote: against voting rights bills; against bills that would have struck at job discrimination and at segregation in other areas of American life; even against bills that would have protected blacks from lynching. — Robert A. Caro

I vowed to never use my American accent, and I didn't. Even going to get the paper in the morning to buying milk down at the shop, getting a cab, wherever. — Lake Bell

Nobody's going to tell me to rap in an American accent. — Estelle

Americans are interesting creatures. They criticize those who speak their language with a slight accent but have no issues with butchering most other languages, my name included. — Santino Hassell

When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings. — Ellie Goulding

It makes it easier, if you can't do an American accent. I don't know. It's different. I played a character in Never Let Me Go where the script for my character was very sparse, and I enjoyed it. With Never Let Me Go, I had a whole book written from my character's point of view, so I always knew where I was. But, with Ryan [Gosling], it was just easy. He's such a brilliant actor and he is so prepared. He doesn't have to warm himself up to be in a scene. He's just in it. It draws you in, in a way. — Carey Mulligan

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days. — Adam Rayner

Her voice was trained, supple as leather, precise as a knife thrower's blade. Singing or talking, it had the same graceful quality, and an accent I thought at first was English, but then realized was the old-fashioned American of a thirties movie, a person who could get away with saying 'grand.' Too classic, they told her when she went out on auditions. It didn't mean old. It meant too beautiful for the times, when anything that lasted longer than six months was considered passe. I loved to listen to her sing, or tell me stories about her childhood in suburban Connecticut, it sounded like heaven. — Janet Fitch

Auditioning for a couple of years, 99 per cent of the time you are doing an American accent. — Jai Courtney

I made some flippant remark about not wanting my son to grow up with an American accent, and the next thing I knew, there were people in America suggesting I head back to Britain if I was unhappy at such a prospect. — Ashley Jensen

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to. — Michael Caine

I can't get it why did I name my book series, I'm talking about "The Life Of One kid". I'm talking about the last word "Kid"?? Aren't your curious I'm with British Accent and putting "Kid" the American word for child the last? I'm also curious I still don't know, I really don't know why. Child sounds like a baby maybe that's all, kid sounds like a child in aobut 7-8 years old! — Deyth Banger

Also "Catcher in the Rye", which happens to be one of my favorite books, I just found that kind of useful. It helps you get into the American accent. — Freddie Highmore

I guess when I first started speaking with an American accent, there's a tendency to create a caricature of the accent because you just exaggerate the pieces that stand out to you. — Radha Mitchell

I'd rather be thought as an international actress rather than a French one. Because I don't know what's coming up for me, my ambition is not to be typecast. So I'm working on my English accent, as well as my American one. I don't want to be like 'Okay, I'm French, and I want to succeed in Hollywood!' — Eva Green

All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It's weird I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in America, because I liked it. It's completely bizarre and everybody would ask: 'Where are you from?' And I would say: 'Oh, I'm from London!' — Robert Pattinson

I think most British people who say they can do an American accent are so bad at it. I find it excruciating. I find it excruciating the other way around, too. — Eileen Atkins

Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people. — Jane Horrocks

America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English. — Lily Cole

Is it a good life, Daddy? Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It's funny because when I'm outside Australia, I never get to do my Australian accent in anything. It's always a Danish accent or an English accent or an American accent. — Mallory Jansen

The moms and dads and grandparents didn't wear suits like the lawyers and judge. They wore sweatpants and stretchy pants and T-shirts. Their hair was a bit frizzy. And it was the first time I noticed "TV accents" - the neutral accent that so many news anchors had. The social workers and the judge and the lawyer all had TV accents. None of us did. The people who ran the courthouse were different from us. The people subjected to it were not. — J.D. Vance

I'm pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately. — Cillian Murphy

'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs. — Bel Powley

Hot, isn't it?" Peter asked on the way into town, and the driver nodded. He could hear from the accent in his French that he was American, but he spoke it adequately, and the driver answered him in French, speaking slowly, so Peter could understand him. "It's been nice for a week. Did you come from America?" the driver asked with interest. People responded to Peter that way, they were drawn to him, even if they normally wouldn't have been. But the fact that he spoke French to him impressed the driver. — Danielle Steel

Differences of age or of race may set up postitions of manufactured superiority: the manual worker from Germany flies to Thailand and because of the historical advantage of his economy and exchange rate, feels and behaves like a millionaire. The plodding Englishman arrives in a small North American town and, simply on account of his exotic accent, may be welcomed as charmingly original and sophisticated. — Alain De Botton

The great thing about not being American is that you don't assume you know what a Southern accent sounds like, so you have to be specific. — Cate Blanchett

I live in L.A. so I worry my kids aren't that connected to Britain, I suppose I don't want them to become American kids. We try to get back three or four times a year. When they go to school they speak with a British-American accent but when they come home to us they go back to their British accent. — Kevin McKidd

For me, my taste isn't limited to magical films. Whatever I read and I like, I go up for, and a lot of the time it's an American accent which can be quite trying, but I'm working on it as much as I can. — William Moseley

Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It's something I noticed with my manager, because he's from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent. — Margot Robbie

My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American. — John Oliver

I'm not talking with an American accent. I haven't gone off and become Sammy Hagar. — Billy Idol

If you're in America a lot, it's easy to get into playing American. All of it, the sounds, the energies, all very different. But it's really hard to do the accent. I tend to try and stay in it all day, which is the only way I can manage it. — Emily Blunt

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long. — Gary Oldman

I speak pretty fluent American, though I do so with a strong British accent, and I love America: The scale and the variety of it are astonishing to someone not born there, and I'm convinced that its energy and generosity have somehow rubbed off on me and affected my writing. For the better. — Laurie Graham

I guess I'd always mocked the American accent. I didn't consider it a respectable dialect, but I was told that it was. — Callan McAuliffe

My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time. — Toks Olagundoye

The 'New York Honk,' as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile ... and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk. — Tom Wolfe

I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian. — Jonathan LaPaglia

I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it's ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself. — Poppy Montgomery

The thing about The Departed, the x-factor that people can't quite put their finger on, is that it deals clearly with class and accent all these things that are fundamental to Boston, but previously anomalous or even prohibited in demotic American films. — William Monahan

Above all her voice moved him. He had not known that an accent seduced his emotions. But he'd always been drawn to those with an accent. Be it woman or man. It sounded nicer. A lavender husk. More proper, elegant. American English was clumsy, clipped, flat. No lilt, nothing guttural, boring, unpleasant. He had no exotic fetishes. His attuned ear seemed to be remembering voices from another life, another time. He could never escape the sense that he'd lost a life dear to him and that life was lived in another language. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

Forget the accent, I'm a fucking American citizen, you arseholes - I know my rights. If you're going to start talking about getting violent, get a fucking cop or lawyer in here. — Christina Lauren

The word was out that maybe, just maybe, a British accent would fit. The hair, the skin tone and the bridgework would have to be up to American network standards, but there had been a lot of British accents up there thanking their mothers for their Oscars, a lot of British accents singing on Broadway, and some unusually big audiences tuning in to British accents in wig on Masterpiece Theatre. — Douglas Adams

Everyone tells me I have a funny accent. It's because I copy people. I learned English at school but have best friends who are French, Australian, English and American; a very weird mix. — Caroline Winberg

We sing in English, not mimicking some American rock singer's accent. That's just pretending to be something you ain't. — Joe Strummer

I love talking in an American accent. Even though it hurts my face after a few hours. — Rebel Wilson

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys. — Max Von Sydow

I never actually studied an American accent. I never learned it. I never had anybody teach me how to do it. It just kind of happened. I think I probably spent a lot of my childhood in front of my mirror pretending to do Cornflake commercials like the kids I've seen on TV from America. — India De Beaufort

I actually always try to not do a general American accent. I always try to give a region. — Janet Montgomery

I'm completely Americanized - I have an American accent, an American wife - but a residue of me is foreign. — Dinesh D'Souza

Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling. — Tanit Phoenix