Charles M. Blow Quotes

As I went to college, I went into radio and television. Now I suppose most people think that's one step ahead of basket weaving as a major in college, but it was part of the journalism department.

Media really excited me. As an undergrad, I majored in radio, television, and film and did internships with CNBC and CNN. My first job was at Sky News in London.

I think of how much I've learned from doing television, and it is so invaluable.

When I came to this country, people told me that if I wanted to teach and work here, I would have to take speech lessons to lose my accent. But it helped me greatly, because when people turned on the radio, they knew it was me.

I got a degree in broadcast journalism at Northwestern but was running a sketch-comedy group and then went to Second City. When the writers' strike happened in 2007-2008, I went to work at E! because I had that background.

People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.

I had two different degrees: One in International Relations/Political Science and another degree in Radio and Television Production.

We had a dialogue coach. She helped us with our T's.

I work with accent coaches a lot and try to do my best to get the Australian out of there.

I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it's ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself.

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won't go away.

I took speech training. I took a few voice lessons in college.

I started off wanting very much to be a newscaster.

I studied voice for three months to get rid of my English accent. I changed my hair to blonde. I knew I could be sexy if I had to.

As a 13, - 14-year-old kid, I'd sit on my bed with a tape recorder and a newspaper. I would do my own newscast. I would practice my diction.

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air.

I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.

When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.

I had a Southern accent but I had broken it so hard.

My degree was in education, but the idea of being a teacher lost out to being a reporter. I worked at a newspaper for a while, then went to New York and worked in PR at RCA and NBC, and at 'The United States Steel Hour,' a drama series.

Prior to going to college, I had a pretty strong accent, and that was one of the things I had to work on a lot. I went to North Carolina School of the Arts; my speech teacher... that was one of the things we really had to work on over the years, and thankfully I think it finally worked.

At the moment I'm enjoying a new challenge at the Royal Opera House, but I'm also keen to pursue my interest in television and particularly in science.

I don't want to lose my accent, I just want it to become smaller.

Before becoming a writer, I worked in the media, for the ABC affiliate in Dallas.