Michelle Ryan Quotes

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work.

I've never worked in my natural accent, having studied so hard to get rid of it when I moved to England as a child where I was bullied at school for 'talking funny.'

Don Cornelius gave me an incredulous look regarding my accent. I lessened it; he gave a nod of approval. Instantly, I felt ashamed. I had made my first conscious effort not to sound ethnic.

I grew up with the idea that someone might hate you if they knew what religion you were; being afraid to open my mouth because my accent might make people think something about me. Or even if they didn't, would they understand me?

When I speak to people from Britain, that's when I feel like a fake, speaking with an American accent.

In school, nobody could pronounce my name. They just called me Rocky.

I've been going through immigration all my life, and I've been stopped for traffic violations by cops, and they get much more curious about me than the regular guy. The moment they hear my accent, things get a little deeper.

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

Just because I don't speak English with an accent anymore doesn't mean that I'm better than the people who do.

There's sometimes an accent on TV and it's like 'are you American?', because I can kind of pick up on it a little bit and I never want to be in that position.

I was bullied because I have this thick Nigerian accent.

I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.

I always wonder whether I'll get treated differently with a different accent.

There's this accent that I think everybody has when they grow up going to an international school. It's a mix of not quite English, not quite American. When I moved to L.A., it just went completely American.

I'd like to talk in my own accent, but then there's that thing about getting typecast as, 'The British guy.' The role that makes you, that's normally what you're cast as forever more. Like, if I did a huge film with my British accent, that would be that.

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.

When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.

It's old news, me and my accent, but it always seems to make headlines.

When I go home to England, my friends all make fun of me for sounding American.

I do have a Mexican accent, but that doesn't mean that I'm a Latin vamp.

The thing about being black and having a different accent, in the beginning, is that it makes you foreign.

My mum made a conscious decision not to teach me any Indian languages so I wouldn't talk with an accent.

I was always curious about the anxiety a person would feel when you open your mouth and you have an accent. You could have a Ph.D. or be a lawyer, but as soon as you say something, you may be diminished in the eyes of someone else.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

They made me use an accent, which I wasn't thrilled about because a lot of us, obviously, don't have them.