Language Challenge Quotes

I did my first movie, 'The Mambo Kings,' in America without speaking the language. I learned the lines phonetically. I had an interpreter actually just to understand directions from my director.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, 'Blah, blah, blah.' That's when I get crazy.

It is very difficult to work in another language, and it is also very challenging.

If you're in America a lot, it's easy to get into playing American. All of it, the sounds, the energies, all very different. But it's really hard to do the accent. I tend to try and stay in it all day, which is the only way I can manage it.

There's always a certain kind of homework you have to do when there's an accent involved.

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?'

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don't know how much experience you've had with contemporary Hebrew. It's quite difficult.

It's hard to learn an American accent. Some of the Rs at the ends of words are incredibly hard.

Honestly, every movie I do in America, the only challenge for me is English. I've done everything already, for me it's pretty easy. Only the English.

One of the challenges obviously with doing an accent from a time period early in history is that there aren't recordings. You would never really get the opportunity to hear exactly what you were shooting for.

'Particularly' is particularly difficult because the 'L' and the 'R' are totally different, like totally different letters. I would spend hours in front of the mirror with my dialect coach to observe my tongue. You don't think, when you speak, about all the things that happen in your jaw and your mouth, how everything reacts, so you have to watch all those things and realise we have a totally different use of our tongue and jaws.

It's extremely difficult to describe interestingly what happens on the pitch. Thousands of journalists write millions of words every week trying to do it, so your chances of avoiding cliche are very slim. And you're trying to write fiction, not a match report.

Spanish is my second language. When I started, I was doing interviews in Spanish and had to catch up.

I remember when I got my first opportunity to work in America, I didn't speak a lot of English, so I only really knew my lines for the movie I was doing.

Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.

I didn't speak English when I had my first job in motorsports.

The biggest issue for me has been the language because I speak so much German now. I've had to focus on my English and find more words to describe what I want to say and also soften my tone. It was quite stiff from 20 years of speaking German, so when I started speaking more English, oh my god, my tongue was like: 'Argh'!

It's part of my challenge as an actor, not only speaking English but speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent.

When I came to Korea for the first time, I couldn't understand the language.

I study hard at Russian, which is a tough but most attractive language.

We [ with Russel Crowe] had an Arabic coach there [ in the Body of Lies] that was really helpful, because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact, and there's different dialects of Arabic from country to country so it was really, really difficult to tell you the truth. And one of the hardest things I've ever had to do language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It's different. And also learning about the customs and the culture and all that, so we had advisors for that sort of thing.

Foreign languages was the only thing that interested me when I was at school, so playing in another language... it is quite demanding because if it is not your mother tongue, you are missing some connotations and some emotional depth of certain things.

Russian is a really hard language - but I've got my own personal teacher. He's been really patient.

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time!