Billy Idol Quotes

I'm completely Americanized - I have an American accent, an American wife - but a residue of me is foreign.

My grandma said - when I was really young and I'd sing along to the radio - why do you sing in an American accent? I guess it was because a lot of the music I was listening to had American vocalists.

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.

My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.

Both my parents had heavy accents, and so did everybody they knew. It's a rhythm thing - people who speak English where they have to hesitate and think of the right word. And I think it rubbed off.

I'm the only one in my family with an American accent.

I actually always try to not do a general American accent. I always try to give a region.

As a Scotsman, my accent can sometimes be difficult for people to understand.

I was born in New York and moved to London with my family when I was five. I did have an American accent for a couple of months, and then it went a way.

I have the thickest accent of any Nova Scotian you've ever imagined.

My accent fades away I guess when I sing. It's real weird. I guess singing is pretty much a universal language like you sing however everyone else sings and that's with an American accent. I sound very different when I talk.

We are American at puberty. We die French.

When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt - and I saw that. I grew up in that community.

I used to have an Australian accent for school and an Irish accent for home.

I've grown up a lot in England.

I'm not Chinese, but both of my parents were born in Iran; my brother and I were the first ones born here. First in our family to go to college, that whole thing.

If you met me in London, you might be appalled at how English I sounded.

My parents were first-generation immigrants. My mum wore a sari but at school and as a teenager and in my 20s I wanted to fit in.

I wanted to do comedy because I left Malaysia and went to America. I got bitten by the Western, idealist, opinionated, democracy bug.

What happens when I go to America is I sound really English. Most people would start sounding American, but I do the opposite.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

Being an Indian in the U.S. and growing up in the suburbs were the two things that really shaped my outlook.

I don't really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult.

Sometimes people say to me, 'Ah, you're not really Spanish; you're British.'

My parents are refugees from Vietnam, so they didn't grow up with 'Star Wars.' I don't think they know what's going on in the movie at any given time.