Aug 22, 2008 07:30 AM
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Tue Feb 9
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A few weeks ago we gave you the best and the worst of fake American accents from science fiction's army of Brits, who are slowly taking over the genre. But there's an even bigger problem out there: American and Canadian science fiction actors who mangle and mumble their way through a whole range of fake accents. Click through for our list of the ten biggest accent failures, with clips.
This week the worst accents in scifi attempted by American and Canadian actors. Click through to find out who made it and who was too comprehensible.
10) Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. Sorry darling, your sexy kicking and running and jumping will not distract me from your dreadful accent.
9) Amanda Tapping as Helen Magnus in Sanctuary. I really want to like this new Sci Fi Channel show, especially since the monsters look amazing — but I'm worried Tapping's dreadful accent will get in the way. It sounds completely forced in all the clips I've seen so far, but I'll guess I'll have to wait until October 3 to make my full assessment.
8) Dr. Peter Grodin from Stargate Atlantis. I didn't even realize this was an accent until someone told me. Perhaps this is just the way he actually sounds in real life? The Canadian actor Craig Veroni lived in Cape Town until age eight, but still doesn't really justifying dropping that hard of a dialect in and out as he pleases.
7) Justin Theroux's Irish accent Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was jaw-droppingly awful. He played the crazed ex of Drew Barrymore, Seamus O'Grady (ha ha ha). It was like he was he escaped from a box of Lucky Charms.
6) Demi Moore In The Butcher's Wife. Apparently this clarvoyant lady is from the South — can't you tell? Her accent is so cartoony, it makes my head spin.
5) Every accent from the first three episodes of Star Wars. Not only were the dialects of the Viceroy, the Gungun and Watto incredibly offensive and stereotypical, but the sound of almost every character's voice in The Phantom Menace grates on my nerves.
4) John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. I know he's an alien, but where did the aliens learn to blend every known English dialect into one super-fem high-alien-society way of talking and laughing? Awful, just awful.
3) James Marsters' accents in Andromeda, Torchwood, and Buffy were all just terrible. His attempt at a glottal stop just needed to stop, period. Don't get me wrong — he's sexy in his own cult-fiction, bad-boy way. But British? No, a thousand times no.
2) Natalie Portman in V For Vendetta. Aw, Natalie's English accents remind me of those horrible girls that get drunk and pretend to be foreign for the night.
1) There can be only one worst accent in the scifi world, and the award goes to Christopher Lambert in Highlander. Granted he was born in the US lived around the globe but I can not begrudge him the honor which he so clearly deserves as number one all time worst accent. Aw hell — I can't be stingy. I'm going to give the award to the entire cast of all the Highlanders. I'll leave you with a clip.
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
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