So you've got an Australian character in your work. Unfortunately, the performer in question is American, British, or something else that isn't Australian. Don't worry - as with foreigners trying to be American or British, all that's needed to sell the illusion is an Australian Accent.
The specific accent is usually Broad Australian; in reality, Broad Australian is one of several different Australian accents, but it seems to be the only one which appears in popular culture, leading to a self-perpetuating occurrence of Small Reference Pools where most foreigners wouldn't recognize any other Australian accent.
It should be noted that, to Australians, many attempts to imitate an Australian accent end up sounding like London Cockney instead.
Compare Fake Brit and Fake American. Subtrope of Fake Nationality.
Examples
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Film
- Both American Robert Mitchum and British Deborah Kerr in the 1960 film The Sundowners.
- December Boys: Daniel Radcliffe (English) as Maps.
- Pacific Rim: Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky who play the Australian father and son duo, Herc and Chuck Hansen, are really American and English respectively.
- Django Unchained: Director Quentin Tarantino (American) appears as an Australian slaver.
- Quigley Down Under: Alan Rickman (English) as Quigley's crooked employer Marston.
- Tropic Thunder: Robert Downey Jr. plays Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor who is playing an African American character (in other words, Recursive Fake American).
- Although the title character of Mad Max is an Australian, he has yet to be played by an Australia-born actor. Mel Gibson was born in America (but raised in Australia), and Tom Hardy was born in England.
- Mad Max: Fury Road also features Riley Keough (American) as one of Immortan Joe's brides, and Nicholas Hoult (English) as Nux. Charlize Theron and Zoë Kravitz are aversions, as they keep their own accents.
- In Natural Born Killers, Robert Downey Jr. plays Wayne Gale, a narcissistic golden-globe winning Australian journalist with his own TV show where he sensationalizes mass murderers.
- The film Irresistible has the British Emily Blunt playing the antagonist.
- The Fifth Estate: The English Benedict Cumberbatch as real-life Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
- Fierce Creatures:
- Kevin Kline (American) as Rod McCain. He uses his own accent when playing Rod's son Vince.
- Robert Lindsay (British) as the zookeeper Lotterby.
- Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker and Holy Smokes. She used the same dialect coach on both films to properly get the accent down.
- Sirens:
- Northern Irish born New Zealander Sam Neill plays the famed Australian painter Norman Lindsay.
- Canadian Pamela Rabe plays Norman's wife Rose. She did however live in Australia and became a citizen there in 1983, ten years before the film was made.
- Meryl Streep in Evil Angels, though more accurately a Fake New Zealander.
- British actor of Irish (his mother) and American (his father) descent Jamie Bamber as "John Doe: Vigilante".
Literature
- Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent is about the Discworld Australia - but here, the accents are exaggerated and knowingly caricatured for laughs.
Live-Action TV
- Monty Python's Flying Circus (five English, the other American) did this several times, most famously with the Bruce Sketch. In it they play a group of stereotypical Australians all named Bruce who all teach in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolloomooloo.
- M*A*S*H. John Orchard (English) has portrayed two Australian characters on the show: anesthesiologist Ugly John in Season 1 and MP Muldoon in Season 8.
- A girlfriend of Daphne Moon's in Frasier is an Australian model in Seattle - but played by an American actress whose Australian accent is every bit as shaky as Daphne's English one.
- In the Poirot TV series adaptation of Agatha Christie's Peril at End House, British actors Jeremy Young and Carol MacReady play Australians. Although, as in the book, they turn out to be Fake Australians in-universe.
- H₂O: Just Add Water stars the South African born Cariba Heine as Rikki Chadwick.
- Elizabeth Moss fretted about perfecting her Australian accent on Top of the Lake and spent six months studying it, to the degree that Jane Campion had to reassure her she'd be fine. She won an Emmy for the miniseries.
- The Good Place has Michael pretending to be a human in Season 3, and puts on a very poor "Australian" accent which somehow doesn't arouse any suspicion. Lampshaded by Janet (unconvincingly) referring to said accent with "Uh huh. Flawless"
- Press Gang has British/American Gabrielle Anwar as Sam. However, she doesn't even attempt an accent: the only indications of her being Australian are the Aboriginal flag on the window of the room for the graphics department (of which she is the head) and her once using the distinctive Australian slang term 'drongo'.
- In The Thorn Birds Mini Series, Australians Justine and Dane are respectively played by Americans Mare Winningham and Philip Anglim. Other Americans and Brits play Fee and most of the Clearly children, who are from New Zealand. The main cast only has ONE Australian in it.
- Doctor Who:
- The "The Enemy of the World" takes place partly in Australia, and while a couple of the Australian characters are played by real Aussie actors, the major part of Donald Bruce is played by English actor Donald Bruce.
- "The Wheel in Space" features a multinational space station crew played almost exclusively by British actors. Among them is Eric Flynn puts on an Australian accent to play communications officer Captain Leo Ryan.
- In "Inferno", the Australian drilling engineer Greg Sutton was played by British actor Derek Newark.
- Nick Stringer (English) played two Australian characters in Only Fools and Horses — the guy Del sold the dodgy Cortina to, and Del's old friend Jumbo Mills (who was actually English, but having lived Down Under for two decades he'd basically become an Aussie).
- In a strange inversion, Australian TV show Wolf Like Me features Australian actress Isla Fisher...as the American Mary.
- A season 10 episode of The Blacklist has American actor Christian Conn doing a very good Australian accent.
Music
- For his album Streets I Have Walked, American calypso singer Harry Belafonte sang the Queensland version of "Waltzing Matilda" with a Broad Australian accent.
- Kate Bush likewise performed the title song on her album The Dreaming in an Australian accent.
Video Games
- Bugsnax has Elizabert Megafig, who speaks with a noticeable accent despite being voiced by an American actress Helen Sadler.
- Crash Bandicoot: Dingodile has consistently been voiced by Americans (with the exception of Crash Team Racing where he's voiced by the late David Anthony Pizzuto, who was Canadian). The entire cast effectively can be considered this (with Dr. Neo Cortex sounding like a rare Cultivated Australian example), as the series is largely set in an Australian archipelago.
- Team Fortress 2:
- The Sniper is voiced by John Patrick Lowrie, an American born in Hawaii, and raised in Colorado.
- Similarly, Saxton Hale is voiced by French-British actor, JB Blanc. The game's accents are all designed to sound like caricatures of what 1960's Americans would imagine these accents to sound like.
- Americans Josh Petersdorf and Chris Parsons as Australians Roadhog and Junkrat, respectively, in Overwatch. Petersdorf doesn't attempt an accent, but Parsons does.
- The titular character of Ty The Tasmanian Tiger was voiced by Australian voice actor Stig Wemyss in the first game. However in the second and third game, he was voiced by Greg Ellis, a British voice actor. Shazza the Dingo was voiced by American voice actress Debi Mae West in the third game.
- Irish actor Julian Casey as Depraved Homosexual Australian Psycho for Hire Bambi "Buck" Hughes in Far Cry 3.
- Australian villain Kano in the Mortal Kombat series is rarely ever portrayed by Australian actors. In the 1990's film, he was played by Englishman Trevor Goddard, in Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat X, he's voiced by American Michael McConnohie, and in Mortal Kombat 11, he's voiced by Anglo-French JB Blanc.
Web Video
- In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Jeice is voiced by GanXingba, an American, to heavily parody the heavy Aussie accent he had in the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z. The original performance also counts, but Christopher Sabat actually did live in Australia for a while.
Western Animation
- Monterey Jack in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers speaks with an Australian accent. He is voiced by Peter Cullen (Canadian) in some episodes, and Jim Cummings (American) in others.
- Gargoyles: Dingo is another such character voiced by Jim Cummings.
- Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko Rama (who is an Australian wallaby) is voiced by Carlos Alazraqui, who is American.
- Even Bushwhacker Bob (also by Cummings) in Taz-Mania. Also in the show, Dan Castellaneta (American) even used an Aussie accent to voice Mr. Thickly, and Rosalyn Landor (British) voiced Bushwhacker Bob's mum and Constance Koala.
- The Steve Irwin-esque title character of Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist is voiced by Canadian voice actor Dwayne Hill.
