Accent on the South

Dialect coaches have been working overtime this year thanks to the overwhelming presence of actors from Across the Pond or Down Under in lead roles for films set in the American South. Tim Burton’s “Big Fish,” for example, stars an Englishman, Albert Finney, as a tall-tale-telling Alabaman, whose younger incarnation is played by Ewan McGregor, a Scotsman.

“Americans can do various Southern accents really well,” says Carla Meyer, who coached the “Big Fish” cast. “On the other hand, Southern is easier for non-native American speakers because of the ‘r.’ ” The key, she says, is a broad, stretched “r,” in which “I’m gonna take the car to the park” becomes “I’m gonna take the carrrur to the parrrerk.” “It’s a little easier for a British or Scottish or Australian actor to go with a Southern accent than to do a neutral American accent, which is the hardest accent for them to do.”

Meyer used dialogue from Mark Twain’s short stories to help the actors sound like authentic Southerners from an earlier generation. “That kept us very simple. The point wasn’t to have everyone sound identical but to have the same feel, especially with a Scotsman and an Englishman playing Edward Bloom and then Jessica Lange, who’s from Minnesota, playing Bloom’s wife.”

Across time and space in the Civil War South, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” cast includes Nicole Kidman (Australia), Jude Law (Britain) and Brendan Gleeson (Ireland). Fitting a Carolina accent comfortably into Kidman’s mouth fell to Elizabeth Himelstein.

“I went to the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston and found the most amazing 96-year-old aristocratic blueblood and interviewed her for three hours to understand the sounds and the rhythm and the cadence,” Himelstein says. “I broke down each sound and drilled each sound with Nicole. We played with it until it became part of her and her bloodstream.”

-- Michael T. Jarvis