How Hollywood Sees The Brits

We've become familiar over the years with how the American 'film industry' portrays the British, or more specifically the English. You know, the beginning of the film shows a red telephone box, London bus and an English 'bobby' plodding his beat. I'm sure in years to come we'll have the scene of protesting Muslims, rioting Animal Activists and the London Gay Pride march, but for now we are a nation of tea and crumpets.

The Americans do make however some real clunking mistakes, some howlers - here are two of my favourites. In the film Daydream Believers, the story of the Monkees, 'Davy Jones' goes home to see his Dad in Manchester. Davy lives in that part of Manchester that has cobbled streets, picket fences and a London Bus driving down his Dad's street.

The film of the life and times of Def Leppard is even better. Music fans are familiar with Rick Allens 1984 accident on the Sheffield- Derby road which resulted in him losing his left arm. In the film 'Rick' is seen in close-up in his Corvette, the camera then shows a close-up of a road sign saying A57 Sheffield, as the camera pulls out we see that the Corvette is on the right hand side of the road, on the other side of double yellows and in the background, no not the Pennines, but the Sierra Nevada mountains.

It's not just the visuals though is it, it's the characterisation. Alan Rickman as the baddy in Die Hard, an American Robin Hood played by Kevin Costner rousing a bunch of wowdy webels in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Sean Connery as the loose cannon in The Untouchables, Dave Prowse as Darth Vadar.

Want a baddy, call up a Brit or get an American to play a Brit who is the films baddy, I give you: Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Ben Kingsley in Sneakers, James Mason in North by Northwest , Salem's Lot and The Verdict, Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With a Vengeance, John Lithgow in Cliffhanger and Shrek (American actor hamming as British), Pam Ferris in Matilda, Patrick Stewart in Conspiracy Theory, Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder and the great Steven Berkoff in Beverly Hills Cop.

There are others, but why have the roles that were traditionally played with heavy European accents, even by Brits, suddenly become deemed to be played by Brits or in the style of Brits?

Well the reason is apparently down to the English accent. Americans film audiences regard our accent as being a sign of sophistication and when you combine sophistication with evil you get the evil-genius. Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans sound dated, French accents are to difficult to understand without dubbing and Italians and Spaniards speak too quickly, even when speaking in English apparently.

There's even an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry mocks his girlfriends voice by talking in an exaggerated English accent.

So there you go, it's a form of flattery being an evil-genius.