Opinion: Ahcting and the Ahccent

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In my pantheon of lesser heroes, there’s Chris Patten, the last British governor-general of Hong Kong. That’s not why he’s heroic in my book; that honor -- or honour -- comes from his refusal, as he departed his Hong Kong posting, to submit his two dogs, Whisky and Soda, to Britain’s absurdly rigorous months-long rabies quarantine, which rather limited his job choices.

Patten’s stand is one reason Britain changed its pet quarantine rules -- and maybe one reason he is now Baron Patten of Barnes. I’d thought no more about him until I met his daughter, Alice, the other evening, a ponytailed gamine with lots of acting credits in the UK, who’s hoping to break in here. For one fleeting, whimsical moment, I thought that maybe the United States should impose a kind of quarantine on British actors, just to protect the domestic product.

Since Vivien Leigh landed the role of Scarlett O’Hara, English actresses have been making it big here. This year, three of the five nominated for the best actress Oscar are British, and Meryl Streep can fake it with the best of them.

At a dinner at Mike and Irena Medavoy’s, several Hollywood luminaries offered Alice Patten their bits of advice on breaking into the biz in these 900-something ZIP codes, among them, ``Don’t lose the English accent.’’ Very sensible. Even in businesses other than acting, I read somewhere that an English accent is worth an extra few thousand dollars a year.

And then I thought about other Oscar nominees this year: the director of ``Babel,’’ the Mexican best supporting actress nominee, the director of ‘’Pan’s Labyrinth,’’ and of course the fifth best actress nominee, Penelope Cruz -- Spanish speakers all -- and I wondered when a Spanish accent might come to carry the same cachet, onscreen and off, as Oxbridge enunciations have for decades.

If Alice had asked my advice, I would have added this to the suggestion that she keep her accent: ``...and learn Spanish.’’