Regional Accent Quotes

My mother was actually born in Ohio but raised in West Virginia where her family had a laundry. She has a West Virginian accent. My father was born in China, but he's the son of an American citizen. My paternal grandfather was born in San Francisco in 1867.

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.

My Dad was from Liverpool, and he picked it up in the army. He'd often come out with this stuff.

Even when a Geordie is trying to be nasty, it doesn't sound that threatening.

There is a whole host of people that have got an accent like mine, whether they're from Merseyside or Wales or the North West.

At various points, I've had a massive chip on me shoulder. I had fights about me accent with loads of those fellers you get from third-class public schools. They used to think I was speaking German.

Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent.

Can I play a southern character? You betcha. Can I do the voice of Tourist Dad and Carnival Barker? Ya betcha. Can I do Fix-It Felix? Ya betcha. But I don't want to just play southern characters, so I hide it; I bury it. I tamp it down like a secret. Like a dirty little secret.

I may catch some flack for this, but the Jersey style I feel is just very different from New York. When I hear a Jersey MC spit, I can just hear New Jersey in them. To where as NY, that style has been broadcasted so nationally that it's just a natural sound in music.

Aw, come on. I barely speak English, unless we're talking about the Lowcountry kind.

It's rare that there's a role that requires an Australian accent.

I hear my voice and I cringe, I kind of hear Philadelphia in there, my hometown.

I'm not posh at all. I grew up in Sheffield but never managed to pick up the accent - which was careless because there'd be some cache now in being a northern playwright, but I missed out on that one.

For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.

You can't do Shakespeare with a Southern accent, honey.

I sound New York. I sound East Coast much more than a blonde person from L.A.

We can only use British actors because everybody's got to talk exactly the same.

Y'all are so cute and y'all talk so proper over here. I love England.

I am a young woman, with a regional accent, from a working class family, who has had a pretty standard education. So far, so ordinary. But in the places I've worked, one or more of these things would put me in the minority.

Some people come up to me and say "You know, in Italy, it's pronounced Ber-beel-lia" And I say "Well, here in America, you're annoying..."

I went to Glenalmond and got the piss taken out of me for my Glasgow accent. Then I spent five years at this very posh school, came out sounding like Prince Charles, which you have to do in order to survive, and then I got called Lord Fauntleroy for the first six months at art school.

I was born in New Jersey, but it doesn't sound like I'm from a certain region.

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.

I remember I once had a meeting with Sydney Pollack and the playwright Tom Stoppard, and they thought I was English. I said, 'I'm just from the Valley!' Just from the San Fernando Valley!

What was I like? I had a high-pitched voice. Sounded a bit like a girl. Spoke with a Stoke accent, tremendously naive. Overconfident. Tremendously overconfident. And underconfident at the same time - really, really bad combination! Gets you places, though.