Steph McGovern Quotes

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 you want to underestimate me because I speak like a Mancunian, like the people I grew up with, then so be it at your peril.

At various points, I've had a massive chip on me shoulder. I had fights about me accent with loads of those fellers you get from third-class public schools. They used to think I was speaking German.

I remember early in my career people telling me I needed to change my accent, that I needed to sound more professional, more BBC perhaps, but I think if I wasn't from Middlesbrough I wouldn't have done as well as I have.

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

I grew up three and a half hours outside of Chicago, but people would call me a 'hick' or 'country boy.' Maybe it's because I talked with more of a country accent.

I actually spoke to one of the heads of a studio, and he said I confuse middle America. Basically, when they see a black person, they see athlete, they see rapper, or they see criminal or something like that. And then when they hear a British accent, they hear posh, so they hear lawyer or doctor.

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.

Actually, it doesn't matter to the papers why you left Glasgow. They never look at the roots of the problems you had, and you simply end up being painted as un-nationalistic.

For too long, people have had to neutralise or lose their accent out of fear of prejudicial treatment or to fit in. This has then led to a lack of regional accents, which has allowed this lazy stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes to prevail.

I get a lot of disbelief that my accent could actually be real, which seems strange.

I have had people come up to me in the street - one woman actually told me she hated my accent, she can't believe I'm on the telly and my accent is so annoying. I ended up laughing because I thought, 'this person doesn't know me but she felt she could come up and slate my accent.'

People with accents exist and just because they have an accent doesn't mean they're less intelligent or what-have-you.

I think it's the way I talk. I think they thought I was too country. And I'm not ashamed of that by any means.

I love America. I eagerly became a citizen. I have no bitterness toward those casting directors who dismissed me because of my accent, nor toward the producers and directors who wanted to cast me but thought the audience wouldn't accept my accent. I think they're selling their audience short.

I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

There are a lot of people in Beverly Hills who come from the Middle East, who are very much a part of the Beverly Hills fabric, and their kids grew up with the privileges of Beverly Hills. And yet they still have to deal with a lot of the prejudice against them for being foreign-born.

Everyone thinks that just because you have a Scouse accent, then you must be 'on the rob'.

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

I used to say that whenever people heard my Southern accent, they always wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.

Many people still regard many users of public services as undeserving.

I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.