Kevin Macdonald Quotes

If you are playing a Hispanic character who has to speak in dialect or in an accent, nail that dialect or accent. When I hear a character that's supposed to be Cuban speaking with a Mexican accent or vice versa, it grates on me and immediately pulls me out of the story.

It's easier to act in your own accent.

I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. He wouldn't have been the right guy to play a Japanese-American.

I don't believe in the so-called Latino explosion when it comes to movies. Jennifer Lopez doesn't have an accent. She grew up in New York speaking English, not Spanish. Her success is very important because she represents a different culture, but it doesn't help me.

I've been online doing all kinds of research and that seems to be the constant criticism, that Aibileen's accent was just too thick. And for me, I don't want anything to distract from the character.

It appalls me that the people who decide what Americans will be watching on the tube have never been to the United States. Not the real United States.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of things American - but when American people do British stuff, it's so universally dreadful.

Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.

I know that Philadelphians hate New York actors passing off New York accents as Philadelphian when they are quite different.

I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.

I've played American characters before, so I've naturally become more at ease. Still, there are some American words that I cannot get my tongue around, but if you keep it flowing, you are never too far away from the truth.

I think the problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, 'Rap is a young man's game,' and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don't know the slang - it changes every day, and you're just visiting. So you're trying to be something you're not, and the audience doesn't buy into that.

I always thought those World War II films with German people speaking English with German accents was weird.

I think audiences are far too sophisticated now to have an English actor putting on a Russian accent - it feels fake.

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

I think only a real Indian can defeat a fake Indian.

I don't think people should be afraid of portraying people with accents, especially Asian accents.

I had people who said I was a brilliant producer but I wouldn't get on the news because I was too northern. But there was no way I was changing my accent - it is the key to my identity.

There's a lot of other rappers that aren't what they claim to be, and they get a pass because they're black.

Sometimes in the mainstream movies, a character who is from the South is portrayed by a person who looks like a South Indian but speaks in fake accent.

I would get a lot of roles for the ethnic friend and then I would go in for that and not be ethnic enough. They wanted an Indian accent. They wanted something more very visually, clearly specific.

I saw 'The War Wagon' with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, but it was dubbed into German. And it had Japanese subtitles and then this little strip with some Spanish words, and I've never forgotten that weird image. It was so magical and funky.

World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

I think Hollywood makes the mistake of mixing all these identities and cultures, mostly from the Middle East.