Aussie accent

So Harvey of Bad Example was talking about British and American accents, and why British people can seem to do American but not the other way around. What prompted this is the wonderful Hugh Laurie. I first came across his work in Blackadder, where he was comic fodder for Rowan Atkinson to work with. Hadn't seen him in too much since then, until House came along, quite possibly my fav TV show at the moment. If you hadn't heard of him previously you could be well excused for thinking he was an American, not a Brit. His accent is perfect.

Which led me to thinking and wondering, how come whenever actors try to do an Australian accent, they get it so woefully wrong, so crappy? Harvey's point for the US/British thing was that Britain has so many accents, so it is difficult to get an archetypal one to put on, whereas there is an 'accentless' US accent that is most commonly used in TV and movies. Fair point, makes sense.

But not so much for Australia, we just don't have that big a range of accents. Most of us do not (I repeat, do not) sound like Steve Irwin, it is a more toned down version of that. But when a US actor tries to do our accent it comes out sounding all mangled. I always wondered why they just couldn't cast an Aussie in, there's heaps of aussie actors out of work! :)

Although, that said, what annoys me even more is when they cast an Aussie, but make them change their accent.
Case in point: Emilie de Ravin who plays Claire on Lost. Now she's an Aussie through and through, hasn't lived in the US for that long, but somehow her accent sounds not quite right, almost a Kiwi accent for some reason.

Back to House being wonderful, Jesse Spencer has thankfully been allowed to keep his accent just the way it is. Can almost forgive him for his stint on Neighbours!