Russell Peters Quotes

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

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

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

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

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.

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.

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.

If you talk with a Southern accent, it's perceived as though you are slow. That's not the case. I've met just as many dumb people who talk without an accent as with.

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

I don't normally take to Yorkshiremen.

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

Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.

As soon as I would say I'm from Boston, people would just say, 'Naaaah!'

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

My mum won't speak to me unless I speak properly on the phone. I have to speak 'American' for work, so often the accent comes through when I'm not at work.

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.

People are very ready to criticize other people's accents. There's no correlation between accents and intelligence or accents and criminality, but people do make judgments.

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.

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.

People shouldn't have to lose their accents to get a fair crack at the whip at a job or move up within a sector or industry.

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.

When an American person hears you speak a different language, you're automatically the bad guy.

I've had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.