Australian Actors #8

[deathbyshinies]

Previously, on Australian Actors...

Australian actors who appear in anything other than 'Home and Away' and 'Neighbours' often aren't *allowed* to use their real accents. It seems that simply because a lot of us happen to be very good at assuming British or American accents, studio types get the idea that an Australian accent isn't acceptable in

Comments

[thekit]

Yay! the australian actors series is back!

Hmm. It's probably tacitus' fault that when the creators of 300 wanted an accent conveying "Proud warrior-race guy facing off against evil empire" they chose a scottish accent.

Do you think we need some kind of defining-in-relation-to-the-rest-of-the-world cultural myth for australia? which doesn't involve needlessly riding to our deaths or playing sport. Something that all other stories can relate to... so that the australian accent is shorthand for something...

[deathbyshinies]

That... that was meant to be a Scottish accent? O_o Um.

I think the Australians-in-relation-to-the-rest-of-the-world myth is pretty much already set in stone - and it's big, dumb, white, easy-going, blonde and male (I blame Paul Hogan, and Steve Irwin who stumped along in his Blundstone-clad footprints). Hurray for both of us scoring five subversions out of six, I guess.

It's particularly interesting that unlike most other constructions of quasi-mythic national identity I can think of, both of those texts were actually made primarily for a non-Australian audience...

[deathbyshinies]

I'll volunteer to distract Eowyn Miranda Otto for you, if you like... :D

[hespa]

Interestingly, in that 300 clip it sounded like his accent kept slipping a touch back into Australian. To me, anyway.

He also did a rather lovely Cyrano de Bergerac on stage a few years ago. Though I kapt remember if we had a French accent for it or just stuck with RP (RP, I think...).

And yes, he is admirably creepy in Cosi... All the actors playing madpeople (is that PC?) in Cosi were brilliant, just brilliant.