Ben Chaplin Quotes

I was very affected as a foreigner coming from Copenhagen, which is the safest, most liberal town in the entire galaxy. I was like an alien stranded in a strange land for the first time in the U.S.

What I find trying in a country which you do not understand and where you cannot speak, is that you can never be yourself.

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

My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who talks your language, it's easier.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt; that kind of thing will get you beat up!

Everyone thinks England and America are the same, as we have the same language, but I felt like an alien as an English person living in America.

I was very nervous about the accent. I was very nervous about being an American.

On a bus ride through China, my family and I had talked for hours before a police officer boarded to conduct an inspection. My mother and brother couldn't speak Chinese, so they pretended to be deaf and mute, and none of the Chinese passengers said anything, sparing us.

There are certain situations, when you're in America, when people understand you better without an Australian accent.

I'm always saying normal things, and people usually understand me, but they're like, 'Where are you from?!'

The last thing an Englishman wants to hear is a man from Brussels trying to imitate his language - you want to hear a different point of view. You may not be able to understand the details, but you can understand the feeling.

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Some words have multiple meanings. Scholastic, aware that I'm allergic to preservatives, kindly got someone to translate the phrase "I can only eat food without preservatives" into Italian. They warned me, however, as they taught me how to say it, that the Italian word for "preservatives" is the same as the word for "condom." So that I should be careful how I look when I say it.

Colloquialism is the toughest part of what we do, as foreign actors, because there are certain sayings that you guys have that absolutely don't make any sense.

My accent does slip. When I arrived in England in 1978 at 18, I was shocked to find myself 'the American' at RADA. The English and the Americans have an intense relationship. They helped us out in the Second World War.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

I discovered that it's not really about the language. It's about how the words are pronounced and the delivery. We have plenty of good English-speaking comedians. It's O.K. if I have my accent, my gestures, my way of speaking.

I remember my parents taking me to see 'The Exorcist' in theaters when I was really young. They're Cuban and didn't really speak English, so I don't think they got that it was a movie about a girl possessed by the devil.

I started acting when I was really young. I came to the States and didn't know anyone, and I spoke with a weird Irish accent.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

It's always nice to have somebody with the same accent when you're working in a foreign country.

In 2007, I went straight from Tokyo to Iowa to join Hillary Clinton's traveling press. I felt like a foreigner there, too. I remember thinking, 'Americans are huge.'

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