I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from.
I'm a bit like a chameleon with my accent.
I'm not good enough to flip in and out of my Brit accent to my American accent.
There are lots of actors who are posh and stick with that, and there are lots of actors who are cockney, and that's what they do. That's fine, but I don't think that could be said about me.
I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.
I'm more of a mimic. My accent tends to drift to where ever I am.
People think for Shakespeare you have to have a big English accent, but it's not true. He designed it so it can be performed in any accent in any time period.
People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.
I was trying to find ways of not being pigeon-holed like that. I didn't want to be tied down by my accent. I wanted to play Americans. I don't want to ever be doing the same thing twice, and I just didn't want to repeat myself.
I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian.
