The stars who absolutely nailed our accent... And the ones who failed miserably
STREWTH! How did Kate Winslet learn to speak Australian so fluently, and why did Meryl Streep and Benedict Cumberbatch get it so, so wrong?
MERYL Streep was so mercilessly lampooned for her mangled Aussie accent more than 25 years ago in the Lindy Chamberlain drama Evil Angels, she still hasn’t had the heart to take another stab at it.
But Streep, a three-time Oscar winner, can take some consolation from the fact that when it comes to Antipodean ignominy, she is far from alone.
Quentin Tarantino missed by an entire continent when he made his trademark cameo appearance as a true blue mining foreman in Django Unchained.
Even the preternaturally-talented British actor Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game, Sherlock) couldn’t manage to come within cooee of a credible vocal performance in the Julian Assange biopic The Fifth Estate.
Humour allowed Alec Baldwin and Robert Downey more linguistic latitude in 30 Rockand Tropic Thunderrespectively.
But no one has managed to nail the Aussie accent quite like Kate Winslet.
“Kate has a very good ear and an incredible depth of soul to not just take on the sounds but also the feeling of being Australian and that’s what marks her out as so special,” says Sydney-based dialect coach Victoria Mielewska.
Proving that her pitch-perfect performance as a religious cult convert in Jane Campion’s 1999 film Holy Smokewas no accident, the 40-year-old English actress is similarly indistinguishable from the “real thing” in upcoming revenge-comedy The Dressmaker, due for release on October 29.
While no one is questioning Winslet’s talent or work ethic, the English actress had one crucial advantage over those previously-mentioned actors — Mielewska, whose credits includeTop of the Lakeand Mad Max: Fury Road.
“My main aim,” says the dialect coach, “is that we don’t notice the accent at all.
“Only then do I know I have been successful — because that allows you to sink into the world of the film.”
Streep, according to Mielewska, made the mistake of trying to imitate Chamberlain.
“It’s a dangerous thing to do because you end up listening to the way someone is speaking. It’s almost like a parody.”
Cumberbatch’s accent is similarly self conscious.
For Mielewska, the secret to Strine is all in the “undoing.”
“Australians are a very relaxed group of people so the actual accent has to be relaxed. You have to let go, you have to relax the energy in the body.
“The main thing is unlocking what an actor presents with. So you are getting the tongue, the jaw relaxed. You are finding that nice open sound in the mouth rather than closing it down and getting that really twangy Australian sound.
“You are finding the beauty in the Australian accent — the openness in the vowels, the richness and melody that is in it.”
Mielewska’s technique is groundbreaking.
“I know I do it really well because no one has approached it like that before. They have just said: ‘these are the vowels and that’s it.’ But it’s much more than that. It’s about the psychology of the accent.
“The biggest mistake is thinking that you have got a prescription. You miss everything a good actor stands for — being real, being in the moment, being truthful.”
Elisabeth Moss sought out Mielewska’s expertise to master her character’s consciously non-specific Australasian accent in Top of the Lake.
“I am really proud of that. She is quite New York and she is stereotypically Mad Men,’’ says Mielewska.
“She had never done an accent in her life but I shifted her the whole way there.
“I said: if we can do this, and you have got to trust me, it’s going to catapult you so far from Mad Men that the rest of your life will be open to being seen doing different things.”
Moss, of course, won a Golden Globe for her performance.
George Miller turned to Mielewska when the dialogue in Fury Road felt jarring.
“We did nearly the whole film again. Everyone was doing their own accent so it was all over the place. I helped them find another rhythm.”
Mielewska was even hired to help natural born Aussies “perfect” their own accents for Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner.
The explanation for why Australians are able to master the American accent more easily, she says, are two-fold.
“Exposure plays a part. But also, American is much more muscular. So we are going from a fairly relaxed place a lot of the time to starting to do some gym work for your tongue and getting it really strong.”
FIVE HITS
Kate Winslet — Holy Smoke
The English actress learned to speak Strine fluently during her first trip to the Australian Outback — for Jane Campion’s 1999 film Holy Smoke in which she played a young suburban woman who converts to a religious cult.
Kate Winslet — The Dressmaker
Winslet “adjusted” her near-perfect Australian accent for this revenge comedy. “Kate has an a very good ear and an incredible depth of soul to not just take on the sounds but also the feeling of being Australian and that’s what marks her out as so special,” says dialect coach Victoria Mielewska.
Liev Schreiber — Mental
Being married to Naomi Watts for 10 years must surely have helped. But Mielewska was also instrumental in helping Schreiber’s to perfect his Strine accent for PJ Hogan’s semi-autobiographical comedy, starring Toni Collette. Mielewska coached him.
Alec Baldwin — 30 Rock
Alec Baldwin embraced the opportunity to improvise in the Antipodean vernacular with a string of true blue clichés. Adding to the degree of difficulty was the fact that he pulled off the entire sequence with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek.
Robert Downey Jr — Tropic Thunder
Once you’ve gotten away with playing a character in blackface, absolutely nothing else is going to faze you. Everybody’s favourite reformed bad boy relished the opportunity to wrap his tongue around some strangulated Aussie vowels.
FIVE MISSES
Benedict Cumberbatch — The Fifth Estate
Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game, Sherlock) fell into the same trap as Meryl Streep when he attempted to imitate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange rather than find his “own” accent in Bill Condon’s 2013 biopic.
Meryl Streep — Evil Angels
Streep rarely puts a foot wrong. But 27 years after her excruciatingly-accented performance as Lindy Chamberlain in Fred Schepisi’s infamous 1988 film, the three-time Oscar winner still hasn’t lived this one down.
Quentin Tarantino — Django Unchained
All we can say is: Don’t give up your day job. Tarantino’s Aussie-accented cameo caused considerably more discomfort than even the most violent sequences contained in his slavery-skewed spaghetti Western.
Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky — Pacific Rim
The two actors — one American, the other British — were supposed to be playing Australian Jaeger pilots in Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi monster film. Since their characters were named Hercules and Chuck, however, their woeful accents hardly came as a surprise.
Charlize Theron — Mad Max: Fury Road
Dialect coach Victoria Mielewska was summoned by George Miller to find a common vocal rhythm for the characters in his post-apocalyptic road movie.
“We did nearly the whole film again. Everyone was talking in their own accents — it was all over the place,” she said.
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