I'm trying hard to keep my Australian accent. My mom would disown me if I didn't.
I've always felt very comfortable with accents. Once I get an accent, I can do it, and that's just something I've been able to do my whole life.
When I first tried the American accent, for a moment I thought I could never be an actor because I just could not do it. But then I thought, 'Okay, it'll just be something that I work at until I get it.'
You can learn any accent you want. It's a fascinating thing.
I was too kind of brave and proud to want a dialect coach because I thought that showed weakness in my armor. But then you just learn it's a more efficient way of doing it. A dialect coach is really important because it takes a certain technical responsibility off your shoulders.
I did 'Christmas Carol' off and on through my teenage years, so I always had that dialect and that sound in my ear, which was so helpful. It became second nature.
As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn't sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can't shake, so it's not phony anymore.
You can't live in a dialect without tremendous work. Like any muscle, accents and voices and languages are all formed out of the muscles that we have in our mouths and faces and tongues.
Most Australians who've got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies.
I don't have a Jersey dialect. So when I approached the singing, I approached it the same way as an actor I approach a dialect, just as a singer.
I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
