Harry Potter: Anti-American clarification

[ereshkigal_doom]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, "sharon" <sharon8880 at y...> wrote:
> 
> Also, a few people talked about the accents.  I saw a film that Alan 
> Rickman was in where played a doctor who did the first heart 
transplant 
> in the US.  I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, 
but 
> I do remember him having an AWFUL, HORRIBLE US southern accent.
> Sharon
>
That's why people like me from the UK are quite relieved that the 
makers of the Harry Potter movies have a rule about only selecting UK 
actors. Not all actors can do good accents, even if they are good 
actors otherwise. 

I love the character 'Spike' in Buffy the Vampire, and I think the 
actor that plays him is really good, but the British accent, IMHO, is 
not that convincing. Dick Van Dyke's performance as a cockney in Mary 
Poppins is still mocked in the UK, 50-odd years after the release of 
the movie!

I doubt if I would notice the errors in Rickman's US accent, but 
Americans certainly seem to! Imagine a whole movie of actors whose 
accents are just off enough to be distracting. It would not affect the 
American audience, because the differences would be subtle, but UK 
audiences would not take the movie seriously.