gollum4

Where are the gels who can talk proper and pirouette?

The Times
July 23, 2007
Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent

Casting directors are lost for words because the next generation of British actors just cannot speak proper. The rise of “Estuary English” has left children with the intonation patterns of Lily Allen and Jonathan Ross, regardless of their background.

The decline in Received Pronunciation has not just transformed the presentation of BBC News. Film and drama producers are struggling to fill period roles that require unrepentantly middle-class vowels. BBC One is holding an open casting session tomorrow to try to find two girls to star in a film-length adaptation of the classic children’s novel Ballet Shoes. Victoria Wood and Marc Warren have signed up to star in the story, by Noel Streatfeild, set in 1930s London. But the challenge of finding two ballet-dancing leads who can act, twirl and – most importantly – speak in middle-class accents has defeated the producers.

“We’ve been to drama schools, ordinary schools and children’s agents, but we still haven’t found the right girls,” said Susie Parriss, the casting director.

“It doesn’t matter whether you go to public schools or comprehensives, children just speak common estuary now. That is the trend. But this story requires our leads to speak with a clear middle-class accent.” The great names of British theatre fear that young acting talent may never recover from a “mockney” upbringing. Scripts often have to be rewritten to accommodate actors trained in regional speech patterns at drama school. Dame Eileen Atkins, who appeared in the TV adaptation of David Copperfield in 2000, has told young actors that they will have to master Received Pronunciation if they want to take on important, classical roles. Otherwise, she said, they will play parlour maids forever.

Suzan Harrison, who produced an adaptation of Tom Brown’s School Days for ITV, found her star at a boarding school after a search of drama schools failed. She said that the biggest problem for her casting team was the number of children using antipodean speech patterns. "The funniest thing was the Australian intonation, which meant all their sentences went up at the end. They all do that and I think that is because they watch Australian soap operas such as Neighbours and Home and Away."

However, accents that reveal privilege are often unacceptable among peer groups. John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London, said: “There is social pressure on some of those at the top of the socio-economic heap to reduce the linguistic differences between themselves and those in the middle of the heap.”

Ms Parriss said that producers no longer had time to play Professor Higgins to starlets. “It is hard to teach a middle-class accent,” she said. “We want the girls to be completely natural in front of the camera. There are already so many technical things that they have to learn.”

Ms Parriss is hoping that hundreds of well-spoken young actresses with wit, personality and the ability to dance en pointe, will present themselves in Central London tomorrow.

Tony Pendrey

Gor blimey, it's a sorry state what we are in when they carn't find enuff people 'oo can tork proper.

Ah Yes, the Soviet Union. All them wheatfields and ballet in the evenings

Carmel

Did you try speach and Drama classes, all my children went to speech and Drama and i think my children speak very well, so not everyone has this horrible common laungage, people from different places have different accents regardless on how they talk and prononce their words. Many years ago noone in film would have touched you if you had not got this middle class English accent or employed you in shops or any job that you had to speak to the public thankgod we have moved on from then.

Aaryk Noctivagus

People have always thought I speak posh.

Nick Dando

I thought it was spelt tosh!

Nick

batman

You'd look good in a tutu

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Aaryk Noctivagus

I never claimed that my posts were anything other.

Harleybloke

Shouldn't that be 'One never claimed............'?

.....You couldn't hear it, if they were shooting at me with howitzers!

Aaryk Noctivagus

No that would be incorrect current English usage.

Tony Pendrey

Ooh err ! Carmel, who is this mysterious "noone", and why would he have touched me just for not talking proper.

Where I come from every young person sounds the same. IE Stupid and ignorant.

My accent is very different from my siblings because I went to a grammar school where any perceived "lazy" speech patterns were beaten out of one.

I sound as classless as any New Labour candidate, my brother sounds like Del Trotter.

Ah Yes, the Soviet Union. All them wheatfields and ballet in the evenings

samkydd

I am always amazed at the working class dialects used in pre and post war films, ending sentences with things like "......and no mistake!" and "You won't fetch a rozzer orl I'll put paid to you, see!"

The pseudo-Cockney of the present day is spoken countrywide, and I always assumed it was used to make the speaker sound "'Ard!" I don't particularly like it but it's better than AQI (Australian Questioning Intonation) where every sentence spoken sounds like a question.

I notice nowadays that young women speak this strange TV language, where they almost cough the words out barely moving their lips and one word runs into the next, and AQI plus a dash of Vicky Pollard "whatever" thrown in for good measure!

I always used to think that if children had elecution lessons it would enhance their chances in the big wide world, but some regional dialects sound terrific; Yorkshire, Edinburgh, Lancashire etc, but definitely not pseudo-Cockney or estuary English.

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

gollum4

I'd like to see more British movie stars with regional accents. Currently they seem to speak either 'RP' (Hugh Grant, Ralph Fiennes) or 'Estuary' (Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Orlando Bloom, Jude Law).

It's even rarer for actresses. Talented stars with regional accents, like Jane Horrocks, have found it difficult to sustain major film careers, while the middle-class "Home Counties" girls- Keira Knightley, Rachel Weisz, Kate Winslet, Kate Beckinsale, even Liz Hurley - have thrived. I'd hate to think Dame Eileen Atkins' advise still holds true - "they'll be stuck playing parlour maids unless they speak RP".

There's Catherine Zeta Jones flying the flag for Swansea, but we never get to hear her dulcet Welsh tones- she's always playing Americans! (Or Spaniards).

silverwhistle

I think the original point has been lost here, which is that, regardless of background, geographical or social, an actor should be taught how to adapt his/her accent or speech pattern to fit the role.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor...!"

Steve Crook

What, you mean that they should actually ACT?
Do they still teach that in drama schools? I thought they just taught how to get and (mis)handle the publicity

Steve

Pye

That's a very ignorant comment. Drama school is one of the most intensive job trainings there is, and the standard of actor in Britain remains astonishingly high, even if many of them don't get the chance to play with material that can show that to its best ability.

As for the previous comment about actors being able to adopt the speech of any type of role: Michael Caine and John Gielgud never varied their accents: it wasn't their strength, but it didn't change their worth as actors. Accents of any kind are something I presonally find hardly any actor can do naturally unless it is their native one. Fewer people generally speak RP now, and just because at one time the film industry especially was only really open to people who did speak that way should not be mistaken for some sort of quality control.