Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 31 Actors Playing Real People | WIRED

carry the fight hi I'm Eric singer Erica still a dialect coach who cannot stop talking about linguistics today we're going to look at some idiolect s-- an idiot is one individual person's way of speaking so we're gonna look at some actors playing real people let's look at some clips Jamie Foxx Ray Charles making a record is business and find a business deal that you can now can you imagine so there's a posture thing here that's interesting Ray Charles smiles a lot his lip corners tend to kind of pull straight back towards his ears even when he's not smiling it kind of hangs on throughout at least a little bit yeah Jamie Foxx is doing this is a pretty damn good deal you know and he's not just doing this he's not just doing it perfectly in him he's living through it it's great I'm very proud of the work that we've done hit again I loved it I read it did Natalie Portman Jackie Kennedy she bought a lot of furniture for this house he took the Lincoln furniture that had been all over the house matter husband rather cross so she went really far with this going for a really accurate a vocation of a very particular voice it was where we lived when we first came here with where we lived when we first came here it's so strange to us now and audiences responded to it that way it's a huge risk I think it really pays off I would hate Kenneth BAE man there's incredible care with some of the details here listen to the tiny little sort of catch breath right after the word most yes they are the most famous twin of course here's Jackie yeah they are the most famous gonna put and more thing in that line you can hear a very particular kind of characteristic inflection sort of movement of pitch right at the end of the sentence when she says bad the Lincoln best kind of goes bad it's a little plateau and then a fault Natalie Portman has that kind of inflection possibility she doesn't use it in the exact same place in this line Lincoln bed an Incan Baghdad she does use it just a little earlier on the word are yes they are yes they are see that's pretty cool that's when you have an accent in you it just comes out Forest Whitaker Idi Amin you this would be a government action Forest Whitaker prepped for a long time to get Idi Amin's Ugandan English and it's really good just pick two details out that vowel sound in a word like first moves all the way forward in the mouth with a kind of a cupped tongue so you get fast he's perfect on that okay so there's a great little thing that he's doing to which is absolutely accurate which is he puts a little extra vowel sound in in a couple of places this has a fancy name it's called a pen thesis it's pretty familiar if you think of a kind of a stereotypical Italian accent it's a me Mario it's me and you can hear it here Jamaal woolard the notorious b.i.g it was all a dream Saturday rep patek mr. magic volleyball so Willard is from the same part of Brooklyn that biggie was and that helps a lot but he worked really hard to get this down and for the most part he does a really amazing job especially considering he had to rap like biggie as well as speak like him she was in no way if I were gonna quibble I'd say what if he uses a little bit too much muscularity and detail especially in his speech as opposed to his rabbits what the is biggie I laugh at one point the music was more poor there's a kind of an ease a flow a slowness almost and a lot of the articulation because well it really is as his lips a lot to make sounds come up and biggest lower lip mostly remains kind of down a little cooler and even out about half of Americans make their S sounds with their tongue tip down and about half make their s sounds with their tongue tip up take a second which do you do Big E dance so I'll just stay more the business everything will hurt the son tongue tip out I never sort of sort of sort of gone before I make my aces with my tongue tip up if I'd been doing them with my tongue tip down my whole life it'd probably sound pretty similar since I haven't practiced it a lot though it doesn't sound quite the same sir-sir state sir you should try to get them to sound exactly the same cuz why not cool party trick Ben Kingsley Gandhi one hundred thousand Englishmen simply cannot control three hundred and fifty million Indians if those Indians refused to cooperate so Gandhi's accent actually changed throughout his life and Ben Kingsley's accent as Gandhi changes through the film it goes from being much more British let us begin by being clear about general Smuts new law to sounding much more stereotypically Indian it would have been very uncivil of me to let you make such a long trip for nothing it's not stereotype though it's really accurate one of the things that is a common feature for most Indian languages and Indian accented English a retroflex consonants retroflex means curling back and the tongue is actually curling back like that it's flexing back so retroflex civil resister the function of a civil resister provoked response is to provoke response continue to provoke and we will continue to provoke and till they respond or they change the law you can hear those retroflex sounds all through those words Kingsley if we obtain our freedom by murder and bloodshed I want no part of it Gani everything around me it's ever-changing it's incredible right amazing brilliance Michael Fassbender Steve Jobs two days ago we ran a Super Bowl ad that could have won the Oscar for Best Short Film so Fassbender has said that he wasn't actually going for any kind of imitation of Steve Jobs let's start with me man it's not a perfect match but Q it's really close and it has turned out insanely great this is so good Wes so but still pretty good remember he's not even an American no he's an Irishman there's a really subtle kind of drawn-out s sound that jobs and it eats eighty eighty eight's for breakfast what are you guys saying breakfast saying another thing Fassbender gets is that kind of slight nasality on ass sounds apples history synthesizer sampling faster faster faster Ashton Kutcher why did they buy an apple because it's got bravado playing a younger Steve Jobs we got to put in the hours it's a process of taking very centralized things um how bad are you saying it's pretty bad get out yeah we could but just get out no it's bad everything your dumb Will Smith Muhammad Ali man I told you I'm through fighting from my intention to hurt nobody I got a much big contender this is a lot of things that ignorant man a much heavier opponent I'm fighting the entire US government but I just think this is amazing you know when you think of all the time that Will Smith had to put it into his physicality his body and learning to box and you see how much of the boxing he's actually doing in this film it's incredible that he had time to fit in dialect where Kali comes out to meet Frasier but Frei just starts to retreat if Joe goes back and it's popping you know wound up in a ringside seat he worked really really hard with an expert coach and the results are incredible Ali swings with his left Ali swings on the right just look at the kid Perry the fight I love the way he has the rhythms and the cadence and the pitch of Ali crazy keeps back in but there's not enough room it's only a mental battle wound the way he lengthens a lot of those final anonym sounds cuz he can't start counting till Frazier come down come down and here's Ali Frazier still risin but the referee was a frown Sean Penn Harvey Milk so this is great I just want to pick out one thing which is cool the vowel sounded weird like force so it's got a very kind of New York oh oh and force is the lexical set word we use to describe this vowel and we actually hear the word force which is cool and you can hear Harvey Milk himself doing it here in the words abortion this income tax is going through senior citizens a voice abortion abortion and so forth and so fourth fourth fourth of us and income tax is no good twice in one Fred Alec Baldwin Donald Trump God they were loving this press conference it's good to be with you to respect the press I have great respect for the news let's take another question from the press right so this is a comedy impression Baldwin's made a lot of really sharp observations we stop giving him because you were overrated we were getting quite a bit of inaccurate news fake news and of course he turned the dial up on them he's exaggerating the features we have a kind of a trumpet it out lip shake which Trump really does and he does it more listen that was locker room talk nothing compared to what Bill Clinton has done far worse okay minor words and his was action but there are subtle things that he's doing as well things that he's doing with a vocal quality something about the rhythm that's really cool I've turned over my businesses to my two sons my two sons even Butthead who are right here we're here today could we get a shot of them Trump has a habit of lengthening out some sounds the greatest jobs a producer and really shortening up some other so I'm gonna work very hard on them so there's a lot of contrast okay this Briscoe Altamont s it really well thank you all for being here I mean for pissing here but came Phoenix Johnny Cash close watch I keep my eyes wide I don't think anybody would argue that this isn't a brilliant performance it really really is that has this way just for the sake of it I'm gonna quibble there's one tiny little sound that you can hear in Johnny Cash's accent which is a quote sound for WH words like when and whistle listen to it in Folsom Prison Blues here's Phoenix's version of the same song in which he just uses a regular old Watson I don't know well when I hear that whistle blowing so you might say that this is a tiny thing well no it's old and it is it's a totally tiny thing and again I don't want to take anything away from this performance helps set the place in the time I think or it could and I think that's just an interesting example of the ways in which really specific details can just help kind of support the story hopefully not in a way that's distracting that just sort of enriches it and brings us in John Wayne Genghis Khan [Music] I share your taste in women target type but not in blood like I said in the last episode let this happen well charter woman Meryl Streep Julia Child that's exactly the sort of thing that I'm very interested in learning how to do in other words learned how to make sugar syrup she sends just like the real Julia Child I'm so much water stops her heart it just seems to be a pure emanation of the person herself not just every single technical aspect the range the inflections the accent the mouth shape but I do know how to boil an egg the egg can be your best friend in this case I think we get something of a sense of Julia's sort of forthright flamboyance as you want to be even joy in life from this voice speaking French - wait what you want Naomi Watts as Princess Diana that's what we need isn't it you got it it's almost as if he doesn't know who I am one of the things that happens in Diana's accent is that vowel sounds that for me are diphthongs they get smooth in the direction of being one single vowel quality so instead of I we have something like we wanted to smile smile instead of oh we have something like Tracy's choices listen to so follow and don't know from Naomi Watts here so you followed him followed him oh my generic she moves in that direction but her lips don't want to move listen to Naomi Watts doing buying time and 5 we're buying time putting two and two together and making five so those price valves aren't smooth at all this is a detail but it's one that I really would have liked to see many years he really would have helped contour the character and the time and place in social class for me Denzel Washington Malcolm X now the house Negro he lived in the house map either in the basement or up in the attic let's just talk about the vocal quality here stuff that you're doing really in the throat right at the level of the vocal folds themselves the house Negro could afford to do that but he never better than the field Negro he dressed pretty good he ate pretty good with the master leptin which sort of come together like this to make voice he's got kind of a gap and a little rubbing there so we get that slightly hoarse breath eNOS if the master got sick he said what's the matter boss we sick he's found a way to do it that sounds a lot like Malcolm X he loved his messed I say he loved his master better than the master loved himself Kate Blanchet Bob Dylan you know we all have our own definitions of all those words there would be no music without the words all I ever do that is the most important thing there really is I didn't come out of some cereal box I haven't really struggled for that there's no way out there was ever gonna be converted by a song if it did I would certainly tell you so bloodshed is a really gifted accent performer yeah oh yes she's letting her oral posture here do a lot of the work of evoking Dylan and his famous voice song exactly personal conscience for long time I couldn't even sing it for you probably our jaws high or lip corners that are slightly pulled back the rest of her lips are soft and there's kind of a narrow space in the mouth but the tongue is really active in doing a lot of the articulation I'm bringing a draft card or bring yourself okay we have enough time to course there's some of that characteristic almost stereotypical Dylan nasality thank you very words but she doesn't go over the top with that do we Jennifer Lopez Selena [Music] yes I'd imagine this is almost certainly a case of little prep time and inadequate probably little to no support the thing is it doesn't seem to be a clear choice I'm not sure if Lopez is going for Selena if she's going for just a touch of a Texan accent so you can hear a pin pen merger pronouncing pin and pin about the same in the word fence fence but other times she just sounds more like nothing JLo so maybe having some little animals of our own Jesse Eisenberg Mark Zuckerberg my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room including and especially your clients are intellectually or creatively capable of doing okay so this is a really good example of one approach to playing a real person don't do them no Heisenberg isn't going for a dead-on impression of Mark Zuckerberg now this is what Mark Zuckerberg sounds like when you put that information in your profile that you bought a scarf that's something that your friends might find interesting right now he is nevertheless evoking the character or his interpretation of the character through his speech that is really good that's really good it's very precise kind of articulation very rapid or a tongue tip this is man whose mind works really quickly you have part of my attention you have the minimal amount who's very precise everything is sort of going over in there it just kind of ridiculous it's all about ideas it's not about relationships I think it's probably a little bit of both by then he doesn't suffer fools now like ever at all and that was it that's awesome the frame you and McGregor Alec Guinness hello that yeah okay I know we're cheating here obi-wan Kenobi wasn't a real person though I do think but Alec Guinness was he can go about his business and this is so iconic that when you and McGregor took over the role playing obi-wan Kenobi oh this is gonna be easy he had to find a way to do a convincing younger version of I have a bad feeling oh this I think it has an amazing job in my experience there's no such thing as luck part of the particular vocal quality that Alec Guinness had as obi-wan kenobe more wretched hive of scum and villainy so coming from opening up the faring millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror sort of stretchy open the throat why was suddenly silenced and you can hear a lot of that as a younger version of it I do hope he doesn't try anything foolish in Ewan McGregor's version I was beginning to wonder if you've got my message these are not your droids Daniel day-lewis Abraham Lincoln I am the President of the United States of America clothed in immense power we don't have any recordings of Abraham Lincoln but his voice was described by contemporaries and they described it as being surprisingly high-pitched kind of Reedy and even whiny and what wouldn't those numberless fathers are given to be able to say to their sons 'as I now say to mine so Daniel day-lewis constructed something around the character that we know as Lincoln and some of these really famous really familiar words do you imagine he'll forgive us if we continue to stifle this very natural ambition so the questions are basically does it serve the story does it feel like the character is it specific does it draw us in is it integrates true because it would what do you think did it feel like a full three-dimensional real person I think yes but I have to say it has been done better dude Michelle Williams Marilyn Monroe I'll be playing boo shankha I want to be the best actress that can be so this really strongly evokes Marilyn Monroe without necessarily going for that den on a vocation I'm considering I important she has that characteristic breathy Ness oh yeah very much love the accent sounds really good sure I don't like there's one particular thing she may not have been going for this at all but she doesn't quite have that sort of little girl tonality that Marilyn Monroe developed how do you know how to answer that two things her pet that comes from a lot of subtle shifts inside the vocal tract but a lot of it comes from the way she sort of holds her tongue forward in her mouth you can hear it here that sort of very forward tongue position let's say I sleep in nothing but Yardley's lavender Johnny Depp whitey bulger you would just sayin just sayin could get you buried all right let's talk about T's and D's again you got two minutes it's really interesting because he uses a particular part of the front of his tongue again and it's a lot of the front of his tongue it's kind of a tip and some of the blade of the tongue yes so we're like this that's $20,000 for you to not it's not really close to the teeth the way we might expect for a New York or most Boston accent did you marinate this steak but it is right for Bulger listen to Whitey Bulger they said that I don't know I forget what they said somebody threw my name in the mix and here again is that take the money keep your mouth shut about what you just heard it's best you're not involved take the money take the money take the money so this is a little speculative but you notice the way he presses that tongue tip in quite hard and lets a lot of pressure build up behind it to me that almost suggests something about this this psychopath you gotta tell him who has all this violence but it's pent up until it explodes let's look at that T sound again take the money take the money take the money now does somebody who uses a sound like that automatically have a lot of Rage inside them and does it mean they're a psychopath no of course not that's not the way accents work but it might contribute something to that impression and how does he plan to achieve that even if it's just letting the actor feel like there's something going on inside that's controlled and then release that's to mate Angela Bassett Tina Turner we always do it nice all right here's something really cool about this it's kind of funny because I'm not actually talking about Bassets vocal performance every now and then I think I'd like to hear something from us something you need something maybe right I'm gonna say something about what she's doing when she's singing he's actually Tina Turner she sings all of her own stuff but Bassett obviously is performing it and she's really really figured out exactly how Tina Turner sang watch her lips when you see this watch the way they sort of trumpet out like this and here's Tina Turner so it wouldn't have sounded like Tina Turner's voice was coming out of Angela Bassett's body if she hadn't gotten that detail right Kevin Spacey Christopher Walken checkatrade smell my feet give me something good to eat if you don't oh no I don't care I'll pull down your underwear right so again this is a party trick impersonation it's not supposed to do anything other than make us laugh and go wow yeah that's him that's really good you know the a of five it's in the ward he's a talented impressionist I think he does a great job be damned if any slopes couldn't put the greasy of my hands on his boys birthright it's like the Tony which I'm up for he takes that one walk and inflection crazy and just repeats it oh my / what Wow it's fun to do and it gets a laugh so why not cocoon Cuba Gooding jr. OJ Simpson well it won't be where it means much longer oh that was something Bobby have a good night huh Oh so Cuba Gooding jr. took a lot of heat for not sounding like oj this that I did not and could not and would not commit this crime doesn't sound like this crime and that's okay it's totally cool it's a conscious artistic choice made by Cuba Gooding jr. and the director probably not to try to do an evoke ation of OJ's speech patterns he worked a lot on the physicality and of course on the essence the soul the spirit of the guy but they left that part of it out they asked me dead maybe because they thought it would distract in some way from the story Palmer Falkner how much smoke does it work for you well it's a subjective judgment just about this trial or you make the call thank you your honor two other actors in this same piece or doing much more to kind of pick up the real speech patterns of the people they're playing John Travolta playing Robert Shapiro and eight ah that I take on a new criminal case I wanted to hire the best forensic people in the world I always ask the client the question is your qualification statement incomplete in that regard and Kenneth Choi playing judge Lance Ito what tape excerpts are appropriate for the jury I know that you've made a commitment would never suppress any information to see this matter through Diana Ross Billie Holiday don't so Diana Ross isn't really doing anything when she's speaking to evoke Billie Holiday but she really is when she sings that particular tonal quality that Billie Holiday had comes from a lot of very very very subtle and complex positioning of the muscles in the throat she's somehow getting just the right combination to really get that Billie Holiday sounds I find this really impressive it's incredibly subtle and complex the particular things that contribute to some of these individual tone that kind of quality of their voice especially when they're talking about a great singer like Billie Holiday Steve Carell John du Pont do you have any idea who I am so I think Carell has done something really interesting here get any idea why I asked you to come here today he's taken some very specific accurate observations about du Pont's actual accent you can hear a bit of DuPont speaking here hi my name is John du Pont welcome to Foxcatcher farms it's got a lot of the accent alone the bowel sounds a lot of the oral posture his mouth kind of stays open all the time throughout slip corners a little pulled back and he has those hesitations a weird long has many aspects it feels like Carell has slightly heightened all of those things no oh you're right oh well though this is just speculation yes I do for me the effect is of kind of heightening the sense of the characters loneliness David Mike that sort of oddness a lot of work to do I want you to tell me something about the program is feeling trapped inside himself that's a really crucial aspect of the character athletic tenacity against the fish at the hole hinges on I win they lose don cheadle Miles Davis how much imminence oh um I'm two people in anyway I was born modal it isn't net if you watch the last installment I kind of gave Don Cheadle a hard time about his cockney accent in Ocean's eleven nylon are you accusing me at booby-trapping you had one job to do gives me great pleasure to be able to say that this is just fantastic that vocal quality that Davis had you might think it's easy you just kind of go raspy like that way you ain't no Walter Cronkite I I ignore the critic but he does it in a very particular way that really matches Miles Davis sometimes we find each other you know that's all I know like a war Miles Davis had surgery in 1957 to remove a nodule in his vocal folds at least in his telling he permanently damaged his voice by yelling after surgery what a nodule does is when you have it on the vocal folds it prevents them from being able to come together and vibrate smoothly it's kind of bumpy and rough yeah and that's why you have that kind of hoarseness of coarseness sure said dad so to be able to do that it's really cool Will Farrell Harry Caray oh if you were a hot dog like a big chopper member and you were starving everywhere of dramatic would you eat yourself comedy impression one three certain you just got to sort of pick one thing you run with it Kerry is very DJ's well he really doesn't send a lot of air through his nose so it's almost like when you're stuffed up and you don't have at the end that could come through that sure as God made green apples don't jerk me around you do hear a Farrell doing that extremely at some points first I'll smother myself up leaves you agree this brown mustard relish I'd be so delicious conclusion so you know just in case you forgot the stuff is really really hard even more so when you've got the weight of expectations you're playing famous person somebody with an incredibly famous or familiar voice there are various ways of going about this various artistic choices all of which are completely valid you know ultimately comes down to is it effective does it serve the character does it serve the story does it draw us in is it a real full textured human being thanks for watching

Channel: WIRED

Views: 10,053,442

Rating: 4.9311366 out of 5

Keywords: accents, acting, actors, ben kingsley, jackie kennedy, jamie foxx, sean penn, will smith, gandhi, impersonation, accent expert, erik singer, movie accent expert, movie accents, accent expert video, erik singer wired, idiolect, idiolects, ben kingsley gandhi, accent, movie accent, accents in movies, accent review, accents and impressions, voices in movies, movie accent science, impressions, impression, voice, actor, wired

Id: lZSCGZphjq0

Length: 29min 10sec (1750 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/nuckingfuts73]

The John Wayne one was amazing

[u/Maverick721]

There's just no way this guy isn't working for the CIA in some way

[u/PenisDinklage]

The linguistic Dennis Reynolds is back! Love this guy's videos.

[u/kappa_lord]

I don't get most of the linguistic technicalities, but just watching those actors side by side with the real person they're portraying is very entertaining. Plus the validations from an actual accent expert makes you appreciate the performance even more.

[u/corejava2]

"I'll just watch a couple minutes" - 30 minutes later. Dang it...

[u/a_bag_of_potatoes]

Hello there! The Obi-Wan part...Lmao

[u/EdS909]

What a great video. Shame that most of them were fantastic I love him ripping into people for disastrous accents

[u/ZiggyOnMars]

I really want to see Erik Singer to do an impression on someone, or do a foreign country accent. It's like watching Gordon Ramsay finally cook a full meal after being a judge for many episodes.

He did Yoda here.

[u/a_Light_Umbrella]

I appreciate his love for Fassbender's Steve Jobs impression.

I really hated hearing people criticize his voice as awful and 'totally Irish' etc. I thought it was a great impression, and I'm glad we get a professional backing this up.