Ellen Page Quotes

I can hardly understand the Australian accent.

I have trouble sometimes watching actors - even when they do a great job - with an accent.

An accent in a way can be an entry into a character.

I find it terribly distracting in movies when people do accents, I must say, unless it's terribly serious and the story is rooted in South Africa and you're doing a South African accent. But in period movies I think nothing can be more distracting than people doing accents.

What I try to do with the accent of any character I play is not necessarily to do something that's generic - an Indian accent and that's how it sounds, for example. I think the accent needs to sound authentic on this person.

Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.

I've been online doing all kinds of research and that seems to be the constant criticism, that Aibileen's accent was just too thick. And for me, I don't want anything to distract from the character.

Are you trying to give me a hint that I should drop it? I can lose the accent; I just have to really focus on what I'm saying. And I have to talk slowly.

I love accents. It's a great way to separate yourself when playing a role.

My characters don't talk necessarily in a normal American way of talking. They talk a little different.

I just can't imagine having to do an accent all the time - like, in your whole career.

You can be as good an actor as you want but, if your accent is too strong, it's going to limit you.

I had this very strict rule when I began auditioning that I wasn't gonna do a thicker accent, because it was like, 'I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny because he talks funny.' And now I feel like there are certain characters that I could play that could involve doing a thicker accent, as long as it's specific to that character.

I just wasn't meant to do Shakespeare. I'm not vocally equipped; I've got this flat, nasal, East Anglian voice. I got to understand the fantastic words Shakespeare wrote but never got to fly with them.

No one can understand my accent!

I think audiences are far too sophisticated now to have an English actor putting on a Russian accent - it feels fake.

Usually they have to deal with a dubbing situation or subtitles, and it takes you out of the experience. That's why we wanted to make something that felt really immersive for Chiniese audience, but it takes a lot of work to make 2 versions of a movie!

For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.

I also listened to hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of [J.F.] Kennedy, and I sort of built [ accent]. And then I got on set [of 'J.F.Kennedy' movie ] and forgot it.But that's what you want to do. You want it to just be real. And I think authenticity was better than - people always talk about when an accent doesn't work, and the phrase you always hear is, "It was inconsistent."

[On "John F. Kennedy" set] everybody was very interested in the accent. Even my collaborators were very curious to know if I was even going to do it. And I was, like, "You just can't not do it." I think everybody was worried that it was going to sound like the guy from... is it The Simpsons?

Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?

I'd never gotten to do an accent for anything that I've done, so that was really appealing because I love doing accents. Ever since I was a kid, I made it my business to try to mimic foreign accents, so it was really fun to be able to do that. I was really working on the accent to try to make it really good.

I think most of the actors that I know that I think are good are kind of funny people. There's just something about being alive to the truth of a moment that makes a good joke that also makes a good actor.

People ask me all the time how I prepare and, to tell you the truth, I think if what's on the page is rich and compelling, as far as I'm concerned, if it's beautifully presented on the page, all you have to do is put yourself there and pretend, and the rest takes care of itself. That is, unless it's a real stretch with an accent or if history matters where research has to be done.

I don't do the running commentary as the movie's playing. I think you should be able to watch the movie without listening to me talk while the movies playing.