Language and accents govern so much of how people think about other people.
On my best day, I cannot do Scottish people. I don't even believe that's a real accent, to be honest with you. I think they probably sound like us when they're in the house. It's how they keep people away from them.
When I heard Puerto Ricans in New York City, it sounded very strange. And the first time I heard someone from Spain, I thought they had a speech impediment!
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.
I think people tend to underestimate you when you have a Northern accent, for instance if you have to talk to the CEO of an international company. But then when I'm talking to someone in a factory, it's just like being with my mum's mates.
I've heard other actors saying they don't want to play a character with an accent at all. To me, that's kind of an insult to somebody like me who did have an accent.
I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
Why is it when a white actor or even a black actor does a British accent, it's considered art?
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.
People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.
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 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.'
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.
They made me use an accent, which I wasn't thrilled about because a lot of us, obviously, don't have them.
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.
Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.
I get a lot of disbelief that my accent could actually be real, which seems strange.
Now, I don't know about my peers, but I get nervous - okay, I genuinely freak out - when an actor starts trying on a Southern accent. That's for Brits trying to find the easiest way to sound American.
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.
I didn't know we'd been tagged as posh. I went to a state school in London, so maybe people think I have a posh voice and that's where it comes from?
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.
The more cynical commentators on our careers would say that the northern accent has been the basis of our success. There's a certain authenticity to the voice - which isn't to my credit; I was just born there.
When British or Australian actors perform American characters, we laud them and talk about how great it is they are able to do this other accent that is not their own. Americans have different relationships with other accents.
It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it soundslike.It isimpossible foran Englishmanto openhis mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
