One of the challenges obviously with doing an accent from a time period early in history is that there aren't recordings. You would never really get the opportunity to hear exactly what you were shooting for.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
When I arrived in L.A., 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.
I did accents and funny voices for the family when I was growing up.
In the end, to do a good accent, you just have to be a good listener.
Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.
Nothing could be recorded in those days except by aiming a movie camera at the television screen. It was at least another 10 years before they had any kind of recording medium.
The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.
I'm aware now over the last 5 or 10 years that when you do an accent, you really have to kind of get down to the nitty gritty and go into the phonetics of it, if necessary. Find out not just the sounds but the rhythms and the music - or lack thereof - in a particular accent.
As a young actor, I booked a movie in the U.S. I didn't speak any English at the time, so I learned my lines phonetically when I auditioned for it.
I was always quite good with accents - I always had quite a good ear - so from the age of about 13, I used to do a lot of voiceover and dubbing for foreign films.