I stepped out of the circle of his arms with reluctance and patted him on his butt. “That’ll do, donkey,” I said, in my best Scottish accent.
I can rap in a London accent, make weird faces, wear spandex, wigs, and black lipstick. I can be more creative than the average male rapper.
When we first sold the Wallace and Gromit shorts to America, people suggested we get rid of the strange British accents and put clear American voices on them, and we held out.
I'm developing more stuff in my voice, more Nick Swardson. It's me as myself in a sense and kind of in my voice, no accent no affectation. I'm growing into my own persona.
I shouldn't be saying this - high treason, really - but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.
If you listen to the way I speak, I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument, that concept comes through very clearly.
Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling.
Much of my playing is rhythmic and choppy; I use a lot of double stops. The wah just accents all those stops and chops and brings out the rhythmic aspect that much more.
Are you trying to give me a hint that I should drop it? I can lose the accent; I just have to really focus on what I'm saying. And I have to talk slowly.
I guess you should approach the roles differently when they're actual people who have been, this is the difference. Getting the accent exact, or the hair exact is less important in a situation like this.
I found that Scottishness and Englishness are actually strong, instinctive things, whatever the historical reasons. Even the accent changes - just two inches across the border.
In the U.K., we're surrounded by American accents. Anything we watch in television. We have 'How I Met Your Mother' and all these other shows here, so it's not something that's really alien to us.
My dad had such a cool job. When you're a voiceover actor, it's a whole different skill - you're bringing these huge, larger-than-life monsters and characters to life. And, also, you have to learn accents.
What I realised is, watching some old home videos, I've always had a weird accent. It's because I spent a lot of time on film sets. But Australia will always be home... I sound like the Qantas ad, don't I?
I didn't act in Israel, but I wrote plays at home and acted in plays at school. I tried to get an agent when I was 12, but they told me that I had too much of an accent.
We all had to learn Southern accents. It wasn't a big research show. With the 'Wounded Knee' project, I locked myself in my apartment with history books so I would know what we're talking about.
I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.
The riskiest thing I have done in my fifties is to do a Polish accent for a new film. I had a great time working on it and two wonderful people to guide me. A dialect coach that I have known for thirty years and a Polish actor.
I'm great at telling stories with the kids. I do all my different accents. We make our own stories up all the time, the four of us, me and Hannah and the kids.
When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.
I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practising it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent.
