As you may have guessed from that picture above, we’re not going to spare Leonardo DiCaprio for that Blood Diamond accent of his.
In fact, he’s number one on our list, even though he doesn’t feature anywhere on the Telegraph’s list of their worst 16 movie accents ever.
Maybe it’s been a while since you heard Leo talking about ‘laaaaf in Rhodesia, hey’, so here’s a refresher.
Be sure to watch just before the three-minute mark and his ‘bling bang’ quip, which really is a stinker:
Leo, you have your shiny Oscar safely tucked away at home, so we don’t feel bad about saying that your accent coach on Blood Diamond needs a stern talking to.
Right, let’s see who else appears in the top five:
Shia LaBeouf in Nymphomaniac:
With its scenes of masochistic sex and brutal violence, parts of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac made for a gruelling watch. Luckily for audiences, LaBeouf’s accent was there to provide intermittent comic relief. (In case you wondered, he was going for English.)
Case in point:
Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
For his role as Jonathan Harker in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula adaptation, Californian Keanu Reeves put on an English accent. A truly terrible English accent. Coppola later leapt to his defense – sort of: “He’s a very magical boy. He worked really hard.” A gold star for effort, then.
It really is bad:
Don Cheadle in Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen:
According to movie-making legend, Missouri-born Don Cheadle apparently requested that his character in Ocean’s Eleven be a Cockney. Across three Ocean’s films, Cheadle showed no signs of improvement. Someone really should have taken him aside and gently said no…
Don, no:
To finish, we again bring things back home…
Juliette Binoche in In My Country:
For her role as poet Anna Malan in the South Africa-set In My Country, French actress Juliette Binoche had to perfect an Afrikaans accent. Instead, she perfected “French actress attempting an Afrikaans accent”, which isn’t quite the same thing.
Ja, no, hey – not her best work:
Wow, she may even pip Leo for top spot with that effort.
You can check out the rest of that list here.
[source:telegraph]
