They often refer to Los Angeles as, “the melting pot of America.”

But I see much more ethnic diversity in my headshot clientele in New York than I ever did in California. Here’s my question.

Many of my customers who hail from other countries often have noticeable accents, ranging from barely recognizable to highly pronounced. I photographed no less than five actors – a young lady from Latvia (the ex-Soviet Union), a married couple from Leeds, England, a woman from Paris, France, and a young man from Sao Paulo, Brazil, this past month alone.

What are your experiences dealing with the challenges of different languages and accents in your acting careers? Do you find that having a foreign accent is a help or a hindrance? What part do they play in actually booking roles or securing an agent?

Working from a relatively limited perspective, I’d enjoy hearing from as many actors as possible.

“Whatever works.”

www.robertkim.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0453647/

Accents are very limiting. As with anything that limits casting possibilities, it's best to use it when it can help, and cast it aside when it's a hindrance. With some things, this is impossible, but not so with an accent.

If you have the right accent for a part, that's a great asset... but the rest of the time, you really need to be able to turn it off on demand. Just like many of us must learn accents for a role, foreign actors should work very hard to get the "American accent" down.

Agreed, Iceman... and even some of us Americans need to get the "American accent" down. I'm a Midwesterner, and I do have a fairly neutral accent naturally... but I can still sound a little hinky when put up next to East- or West-coasters unless I'm actively "generalizing" some of my sounds.

I saw a play last night at Michael Howard Studios (a dear friend, and legendary acting teacher). It was an adaptation of "Twelve Angry Men" so that it could be played by "Twelve Angry Women." The production was wonderful and the performances were, for the most part, strong.

The thing that is pertinent to this conversation -- and that struck me as I watched -- was that more than half of the actors had very strong "non-American" accents. I couldn't help but think that they would be very limited moving forward in their careers.

It's important to be able to master an authentic standard American accent, no matter where you are from (South of France, or South Texas). Once you've done that, you can play most roles. If you can build from there, with an arsenal of authentic accents, you are only expanding your possibilities.

It's the rare actor who will be so impressive that a script will be completely re-written to accommodate an obvious accent. The only example I can think of is Olivier Martinez, the French actor who so impressed Adrian Lyne that the script for "Unfaithful" was re-written to make his character a Frenchman (but, the re-writes were very minimal).

Best,

Ron

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0114583/
www.ronbrownheadshots.com

Foreign actors with accents have huge stumbling blocks ahead of them and are well advised to use dialect coaches to learn american accents asap. While diversity casting is big, the emphasis on being easy to understand is even bigger. Andy Garcia admits he's limited because he can't do any other accent, same for Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz. If you're going to break in as a foreign actor from another country that's one thing but if you're here pursuing a career in NY or LA casting directors need to be able to understand you and you need to be able to portray something other than your own nationality otherwise you'll be auditioning once or twice a year.