Follow TV Tropes

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Following

Fake Brit

Go To

Patrick: Is the English lady sick, Auntie Mame?
Mame: She's not English darling, she's from Pittsburgh.
Patrick: She sounded English.
Mame: Well, when you're from Pittsburgh you have to do something.

A non-British actor pretending to be a British character. (Please note that "British" here actually indicates "Southern English", not Northern English, Scots, or Welsh.) The most commonly imitated accent is the Received Pronunciation one, or else a Cockney (East London) voice. There is, of course, a great variety of English accents, but these are the two most recognizable to American ears. Even English actors who don't have these accents normally may be called upon to imitate them. Irish, Scottish and Welsh actors are typically required to play English characters too - since England has a bigger film industry and these actors usually end up moving to London if they want to build up an international career. It is a rare Irish, Scottish or Welsh actor indeed who doesn't have half a dozen English characters on their résumé (unless they can't do the accent of course).

The most glaring error in fake British accents stems from American English's lack of the short "o" (IPA: [ɒ]) sound with which Brits pronounce words such as "pot" and "orange". Americans tend to hypercorrect this to the long "o" (IPA: [ɔː]) sound as in "all" or "door". There exists a stereotype that American actors simply can't do English accents at all. See the Analysis tab for more information on that. Regardless this page and its offshoots contain plenty of examples of well-done fake English accents - from Scots, Irish and Americans alike. Accents in general usually depend on the actor having a good ear to pick up the differences in pronunciation, and usually a dialect coach to help make sure they're getting them right.

A subtrope of Fake Nationality, and a Sister Trope to Fake American, Fake Scot, Fake Irish, and Fake Australian.

See also British Accents, The Queen's Latin, I Am Very British. See Not Even Bothering with the Accent, and Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping when this doesn't work.


Example subpages:

Other examples

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • American actor Rodney Mason as English (?) socialite Tony Sinclair in the series of Tanqueray gin commercials.
  • From 1970 to until about 2020, Froot Loops mascot Toucan Sam had an British accent based on the standard impression of Ronald Colman, even though his British accented voice was first provided by American actor Paul Frees (who replaced Mel Blanc, whose portrayal of Toucan Sam had him speaking with an normal American accent with Pig Latin) and then by Canadian actor Maurice LaMarche following Frees' death in 1986.

    Anime and Manga 
  • 4Kids Entertainment seems to like this trope a lot.
    • Ryo Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh! is played in 4Kids' English dub with a rather thin British accent. The Abridged Series mocks this by making Bakura be extremely British (at one point, he excuses himself by saying he has to go "drink cups of tea and eat bangers and mash"). LittleKuriboh, the creator of the Abridged Series, is British himself.
      • Repeated with Daichi/Bastion Misawa in the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
    • Dren (Kish) in Mew Mew Power too. When he debuted fans of the original Tokyo Mew Mew balked. On one forum someone complained "Whoever heard of a British alien", Gracie Lizzie had to resist the temptation to sign up just so she could say "Oh, we have quite a few thanks".
      • Ren and Jun in the 4Kids dub of Shaman King. They gave the brother and sister a consistent British accent, but um... they're Chinese. And then, for some reason, they chose to not give a British accent to Lyserg... who actually is British.
  • In Code Geass, the mad scientist Lloyd ended up with a British accent in the American dub that sounded like a cross between a Brooklyn accent and a New Zealand one. Quite odd, since no one else speaks with an accent. And he's disturbingly poncy, although that might be on purpose. His voice actor, Liam O'Brien, was born in New Jersey.
  • In the dub of the anime Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, American voice actor Rob Paulsen gives Saber Rider a surprisingly convincing English accent.
  • Subverted with Integra Hellsing as Victoria Harwood is truly British. Played straight with Seras, though, as K.T. Grey is an American.
  • Kurama of YuYu Hakusho also has a thin British accent in the US dub, while Botan’s is much heavier.
  • The dub of Darker than Black has Troy Baker voicing November 11... and doing a really good job. The other Brits in the series were also given accents in the dub.
  • The English dubs for the assorted Negima! Magister Negi Magi anime series have the voice actors for Negi, Eva, Chachamaru and Anya providing British accents for their characters. Aside from the fact that Negi (and probably Anya, although its mentioned she's spent time in London) should have a Welsh accent instead of an English one, they're quite good. Though, of course, Welsh is a British accent.
  • In the original Japanese version of The Adventures of Kotetsu, the series' diminutive Fiery Redhead protagonist, Lynn "Kotetsu" Suzuki, hails from Kyoto and she has a Kyoto accent as a result. However in ADV's English dub, she is given a generic English accent.
  • The Read or Die dub has many British characters voiced by Americans, with varying degrees of success.
  • Zentraedi advisor Exedore in Robotech was given a fake British accent by Ted Layman. Probably to play up on his frail appearance and detached, intellectual demeanor. Alien scientists types are almost always given English accents, even when they are good guys (Exedore defects to the good guys). This is probably to keep them from all sounding like Mr. Spock, who is noted as being the progenitor of the trope but not speaking with a Brit accent.
  • According to Black Butler, even English nobles had loud cockney accents.
  • The dub for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, due to majority of the characters being British unsurprisingly evokes this. Some of the voice actors like Ben Diskin and Patrick Seitz performed the accents decently while others such as Johnny Yong Bosch... well... YMMV.
  • The English dub for Moriarty the Patriot is full of Americans faking the accent...except for Sherlock's voice Theo Devaney (whose pronunciation the American director tried to correct), as well as Ciarán Strange (Harry) and Elsie Lovelock (Mary Morstan). Some of the Americans are more successful at faking the accent than others.
  • If Streamline Pictures needed a woman or child to sound British, Lara Cody was their go-to voice. Case in point: Dan Lang from Vampire Hunter D and (for some reason or another) Kei from AKIRA.
  • Tomo-chan Is a Girl! has a British character, Carol Olston voiced by a Japanese-American voice actress. Unique to most anime examples though, this applies to both Japanese and English dubs as Sally Amaki was voiced Carol in both languages.

    Music 
  • 80s synthpop band Information Society.
  • Rapper Slick Rick's mid-Atlantic drawl is authentic (he was born and raised partly in London and partly in New York), but numerous American rappers, including Rockwell, Dana Danenote  and Snoop Dogg, have been inspired to imitate his "British" style with varying degrees of success.
    • Andre 3000 does so early on in Outkast's 'Funkin Around', which is not a bad attempt to start with, until he lapses back into Atlantan almost immediately soon after.
  • The Shins, likely imitating 60's British Invasion rock.
  • On the first two Ministry albums (as well as their early singles), Al Jourgensen was singing with a faux-British accent despite being from Chicago, probably because he was emulating contemporary British Synth-Pop at the time (e.g. "Revenge" has him repeatedly pronouncing "again" as "agayn" rather than the American "agehn"). Once the band switched to more of an Industrial Metal sound with The Land of Rape And Honey, and the earlier work became Old Shame, the accent pretty much disappeared. He also sounds somewhat British on their cover of "The Light Pours Out Of Me" by British Post-Punk group Magazine, since he's imitating Howard Devoto's vocal style on the original version.
  • LA-born Emilie Autumn, whose persona is that of a Victorian London Bedlam House inmate, uses an English accent in much of her music and poetry readings. She does a good job with it, although there are times when it's clear that a rhyme was written with an American accent in mind.
  • Rogue, frontman of the Floridian darkwave act The Crüxshadows, often sings with a faux Essex-type accent.
  • The Guns N' Roses cover of the UK Subs song "Down on the Farm" has W. Axl Rose attempt one of the worst English accents in music history, comparable to Dick van Dyke's infamous attempts at Cockney on film.
  • Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone of The Lonely Island put on fake English accents in their famous "Jizz in My Pants" single, since the song is intended as an homage to the Pet Shop Boys (particularly "West End Girls"). Most hilariously, it allows the following rhyme to happen:
    Andy: Last week, I sawr a film
    As I recall it was a horror film
  • The folk/rock/punk group The Dreadnoughts are from Canada, but in many of their songs, particularly sea shanty covers, they put on English-Welsh accents which are actually fairly decent.
  • Famously, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong occasionally lapses into a pseudo-Cockney drawl, particularly on earlier tracks like "Basket Case." This could be owed to him imitating the styles of British punk bands like Sex Pistols.
  • Blake Voss of Santa Cruz-based darkwave band Vandal Moon sings in a heavy pseudo-Southern English accent obviously inspired by The Cure's Robert Smith.
  • In the They Might Be Giants song "Los Angeles/Hollywood" Linnell adopts a fake Scouse accent, likely as a nod to The Beatles, who both Johns have openly expressed being avid fans of.
  • German techno group Music Instructor use an RP accent for the eponymous robot character.

    Pinball 

    Podcast 

    Radio 
  • Producer "Nigel", of Tony Kornheiser's radio show, is actually Marc Sterne, a native of the DC/Maryland/Virginia area.

    Theatre 
  • In On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Daisy Gamble, under Dr. Bruckner's hypnotic influence, acquires an English accent when recalling her previous life in 18th-century London as Melinda Welles. Barbara Harris originated the role on Broadway, and Barbra Streisand starred in the film version; neither actress was British.

    Video Games 
  • Anomen from Baldur's Gate II is an example of an in-story character being one. No one else in his family has such an accent, and the characters eventually decide that he puts it on so that he will sound more cultured.
  • All but three of the Preps from Bully.
    Jimmy: Hey, are you English?
    Tad: Well, no. I just speak this way because I'm very insecure.
  • Crash Bandicoot's main Evil Brit N. Tropy was voiced by American Michael Ensign while another American Corey Burton voices him in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. Although he had a grand total of one line in Burton's first, it's now infamous and widely considered the weaker of Burton's two roles in the game. His voice for N. Tropy got better with the remakes.
  • The voice-actors for the generic Fake Brit voices in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion do it blandly at the best of times, and at other times get it horribly wrong.
  • Dwight Schultz voices two distinct British-sounding characters in Final Fantasy X - the merchant O'aka, and the scholar Maechen. However, Maechen's slightly more cultured accent is far better than O'aka's rougher, working-class one; as O'aka, Schultz has a tendency to jarringly mispronounce certain "Britishisms", such as elongating the E sound on the word "ye" when it's usually pronounced more like "yuh".
    • Also applies to O'aka's brother Wantz, voiced by Tom Kenny.
  • Most of the characters in The Hobbit were voiced by American voice actors.
  • Troy Baker as Quintessential British Gentleman Arlon from Kid Icarus: Uprising. He does it again in Binary Domain as Consummate Professional Charlie. He also adopts a fairly British accent as Pagan Min in Far Cry 4; Min hails from Hong Kong, which was almost exclusively under British control from 1842 to 1997.
  • In The Last Remnant, Jason Liebrecht puts on a fake Brit accent to play David Nassau, the Marquis of Athlum. He doesn't do a generic cockney, though his accent is an amalgamation of three different English accents. It's oddly fitting.
  • The characters in the Legacy of Kain series speak in a pseudo-Shakespearean manner, but a fair few of them are voiced by Americans.
  • Mana Kawai from Lost Dimension is an in-universe example. The character is Japanese, but puts on a British accent, since she believes it makes her sound cuter. Also applies out of universe, as she’s voiced by the American Kira Buckland.
  • (American) Cam Clarke's Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid. In the same game, Liquid pretends to be Solid Snake's American boot camp instructor, Master Miller.
    • Jennifer Hale (Naomi) also used an English accent in the original Metal Gear Solid; Hale's from Newfoundland. In the remake and MGS4, she dropped the accent in favour of a fairly non-regional North American one.
  • Subverted with the British Tracer in Overwatch. Cara Theobold is 100% Brit, but she just opted to do a 'larger than life' style voice for Tracer, making her Cockney accent sounds a bit too exaggerated that people thinks she's this trope.
    • American Vanessa Marshall did a fairly good English accent as Strangelove in Peace Walker, marred mostly by the fact that it sounded vaguely southern and Strangelove was supposed to be from Manchester.
  • Luke in the US version of Professor Layton and the Curious Village is played by American voice actress Lani Minella, adopting a mostly Cockney accent. Professor Layton himself is also voiced by an American but pulls off a more convincing accent.
    • This is averted when it comes to Luke's voice in UK versions of the game however, where he's instead voiced by (British-born) Maria Darling. This is reportedly due to actual British-English test players hating Luke's accent.
    • In the US version of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, "Future Luke"/Clive is played by Yuri Lowenthal and Dr. Stahngun is played by Liam O'Brien, two famous American voice actors. Both their fake accents are very convincing.
  • Yuri Lowenthal voices British teenage hacker Matt Miller, leader of the Deckers gang, in Saints Row: The Third.
  • The first Spyro the Dragon series often used RP accents for its dragon characters. The third game introduced a character voiced by the same actor as the title character, and while he does speak with a 'pip, pip' accent, it's fairly good.
  • Krystal may have averted this in Star Fox Adventures where she was voiced by an actual Brit named Estelle Ellis, but in Star Fox: Assault and the Super Smash Bros. series, an American named Alesia Glidewell filled in for her.
  • Maggie Powers, the British Mission Control in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain and Dark Mirror, is voiced by the aforementioned Jennifer Hale, who also goes Fake Russian as Mara Aramov.
  • The British (sounding) Oleander and Fred from Them's Fightin' Herds are voiced by the American Alexa Kahn and Keith Ferguson, respectively.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles X feature Celica, an alien female who joins the humans in New LA while on the run from mutual enemies. In the English dub, Celica is voiced by Mela Lee who most of the time performs the accent well, but it's painfully obvious that it's an American voicing her. Even stranger though is that some of the voice actors for the avatar character are actually British, resulting in some wondering why a Brit wasn't hired for Celica either.
    • Rex in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, voiced by an American, has an exaggerated (and less-than-convincing) British accent.
    • Averted in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where the main protagonist party are all voiced by English, Irish, and Welsh actors.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Original 
  • The voice actor of Magnus the Red in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device (that is, Zegram) tried to make him sound British but ended up making him sound Australian. Eventually the creators just rolled with it and made the daemon primarch an Aussie.
  • Commodore, the token Brit of Lego Pirate Misadventures is voiced by Alex Jeffrey, a Minnesotan. Taken to an extreme in #4, when he voices a small army of Royal Marines that includes Scottish and Irish accents as well as English.
    • Series co-creator Ben Lifson gets in on the fun in #3 as the voice of a pompous prosecutor.
  • An actual plot point in The Nekci Menij Show, as Xtine calling out Medoner for not being British while pretending to be sets off the Ballroom Blitz later in Episode Five.
  • Media Whorz round table member Caveman would have some occasions where he would act like a sophisticated professor. He would put on an ocular and start speaking in a fake English Accent.
  • In Naruto: The Abridged Series Kabuto and Chouji have British accents.
  • Red vs. Blue has Wyoming, to whom Matt Hullum gives a comedic accent.
  • hololive: The English Vtuber Amelia Watson is set up to be a British detective in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, but any time she attempts a Cockney accent, it's pretty obviously fake. In-character, she admits that her accent is indeed fake, because she's "undercover".
  • The Noedolekcin Archives: Both of Kirk Odd's voice actors, Lyric West and Puz, put on fake British accents.

    Western Animation 
  • Stewie from Family Guy is portrayed with a Rex Harrison-inspired accent. Especially funny when he meets an actual British character and complains about her horrible accent. In an episode showing what an English Family Guy would look like, Stewie's British counterpart speaks with a heavy American Southern accent. "Send in Stewie, Please" reveals he was poking this trope for fun, and actually has an American accent.
    • FG's portrayal of British accents can get decidedly ropey: in a historical flashback, the Bronte sisters speak with Cockney acccents. If you know the Brontes were from Yorkshire the joke is still funny but the chosen accent jars a bit.
  • Numbuh 1 and his parents in Codename: Kids Next Door (voiced by Ben Diskin, Jennifer Hale, and Frank Welker)
  • Colleen from Road Rovers (voiced by Tress MacNeille).
  • Animaniacs has Jess Harnell as Scouse-sounding Wakko and Rob Paulsen as Cockney-accented Pinky, though aside from the accents there's nothing to indicate that either character is actually British (especially considering that both of Wakko's siblings have American accents).
  • In Gargoyles' opening episode (and anytime they flash back to medieval Scotland) the loose association of Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members playing the various bit parts display truly awful Scottish accents.
  • King of the Hill's Luanne uses an extremely bad British accent for one of her "Manger Babies" puppet's voice—it sounds very much like a dirt-ignorant young Texas girl's attempt at a toff....
  • Futurama's Bender (built in Mexico, based in New New York and voiced by an American) occasionally uses (what he thinks is) a "British" accent, which is labelled "King" in one episode and sounds a great deal like the late Ronald Coleman. "Let me have a go at this mechanised chap, I can be quite the rough customer!"
  • In Chaotic, the voice of Klay contains a terrible British accent. But seeing how 4Kids assigned an Australian accent to Jack Atlas in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, they are just doing to emphasize that the character is a Jerkass.
  • Whenever English people turn up on Celebrity Deathmatch, they always have Cockney accents, even if they're the Gallagher brothers (actually from Manchester) or the Spice Girls (variously from Hertfordshire, Yorkshire and Merseyside).
  • The Modifyers has Agent Xero (voice acted by Mae Whitman), who adopts a British accent as part of her disguise as Lacey Shadows.
  • Jerry, the Q role in Totally Spies! was voiced by American Jess Harnell in seasons one and two, and by British-born and Canadian-raised Adrian Truss from season three.
    • James, the antagonist of the episode "Evil Boyfriend", masquerades as a British exchange student.
  • The few Brits (if they're not acting as themselves) who have shown up in South Park have accents so ridiculous that it might even avert this trope. Richard Dawkins in particular was pretty agitated by his portrayal.
  • In The Penguins of Madagascar, Private has a British accent, but his voice actor, James Patrick Stuart, is from California. This is lampshaded by Skipper in "Hard Boiled Eggy" when he notes that Eggy picked up an "adorably fake British accent" from Private. James Patrick Stuart's father is a real Brit, however: Chad Stuart of Chad & Jeremy fame.
  • In T.U.F.F. Puppy, one of Snaptrap's henchmen, Ollie, is this in and out of universe. In universe, Ollie, who normally speaks with a British accent, is actually French, while his real-life voice actor, Jeff Bennett, is very much American.
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Peeps, a boy with a Cockney accent, is voiced by Christian Potenza, a Canadian. Additionally, his father Rudolpho, who also possesses a British accent, is voiced by Argentinean-Canadian actor Juan Chioran.
  • Mr. Herriman, the British, stuffy rabbit on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is voiced by American voice actor Tom Kane. To be fair, he was imagined up by a little girl in the United States, so he might actually be a Fake Brit.
  • Barrett of The Bremen Avenue Experience once tried singing with a Cockney accent, because of the many famous British musicians. His bandmates heavily mocked him for it.
    Tanner: English guys don't sing with that accent!
  • Narrowly averted with Jetta from Jem. The series' creator recommended the only British choice, while the others were Americans doing subpar Cockney accents. Jetta has a stereotypically lower-class accent which gives away the fact she is not a rich celebrity like she says, though the others are too ignorant of British accents to notice.
  • Not counting the Texan rat couple and the French Dragon frog villain, all of the characters from Flushed Away are voiced by predominantly British actors, except Roddy, who is voiced by Hugh Jackman (an Australian).
  • The Great Mouse Detective: Vincent Price as Big Bad Ratigan. It helps that Price took acting lessons in England.
  • Pocahontas: American-born and Australian-raised Mel Gibson as English Captain John Smith. David Ogden Stiers (American) likewise as both Governor Ratcliffe and his assistant Wiggins.
  • All of Scrooge McDuck's voice actors have been Americans, except for David Tennant in DuckTales (2017).note 
  • Vambre Warrior in Mighty Magiswords, voiced by Grey DeLisle, who is known for her talent with accents.
  • Nelvana provides a few examples:
    • The entire voice cast of Blazing Dragons was Canadian, but the actors gave the characters British accents in homage to the show's spoofing of Arthurian legend and as a nod to the series being the brainchild of Terry Jones. Appropriately, the British network ITV helped to produce the show.
    • Half of the cast of their Animated Adaptation of Redwall speak with various British accents - yet the entire cast is comprised of Toronto-based actors (although Fiona Reid, Janet Wright and Tim Curry were British-born). For example, Cluny the Scourge and Badrang the Tyrant were both voiced by Brazilian-born Diego Matamoros, giving the two respective villains a different "evil Brit" voice, while lead character Matthias is voiced by Tyrone Savage doing a British accent.
    • Rupert, their adaptation of the British Rupert Bear comic strip, had an entirely Canadian cast using British accents for the characters.
    • On Jane and the Dragon, the characters are all voiced by Canadians speaking in English accents, although Dragon's voice actor, Adrian Truss, is British-Canadian.
  • Grey DeLisle and Alan Tudyk voice Star's parents in Star vs. the Forces of Evil with this accent.
  • Miles from Tomorrowland:
    • Tom Kenny uses one when voicing Ambassador Titus.
    • Grey DeLisle-Griffin uses one for Queen Gemma
    • Cree Summer and Keith Ferguson as Haruna's parents with an accent, which is surprising since Isaac Ryan Brown, Haruna's voice actor, uses his regular American voice.
    • Felicia Day as Grendle
  • Pocoyo: In Let's Go Pocoyo and the 2016 reboot, new narrator Stephen Hughes is in fact an American doing a convincing British accent, as proven by certain brief cases of Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.
  • Sofia the First:
    • Jess Harnell voices Cedric
    • Russi Taylor and Jim Cummings voice Cedric's parents. The latter also voices Wormwood.
    • Jennifer Hale voices Violet the castle maid.
    • Rachael MacFarlane voices Cedric's sister, Cordelia
    • Kari Wahlgren voices Wendell's mother
    • Mick Wingert voices Sir Dax
    • Jeff Bennett voices Merlin
  • Most of the characters voiced by Corey Burton have British accents. In particular, all of the Disney roles that were previously voiced by Tony Jay.
  • All characters in The Crumpets first season English dub have British accents, while most credited voice actors are American and one is Australian. Lil-One, King, and Cassandra are the only regular characters that avert this trope.
  • American Paul Frees voicing Liverpudlians John Lennon and George Harrison on The Beatles in 1965 was then and is still seen as a bad case of Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.
  • Wolverine and the X-Men (2009):
    • Subverted with Emma Frost. She's voiced by Kansas native Kari Wahlgren — but canonically, in the comics, Emma herself is a case of this, as she's a Boston native who puts on an English accent.
    • Played straight with Grey DeLisle, who was born in California, voicing the English-born Psylocke.
  • X-Men: Evolution:
    • David Kaye (Canadian-American) affects an English accent to play Professor X, in a clear imitation of Patrick Stewart's performance in the live action film series.
    • Nicole Oliver, also Canadian, plays Ristie - a friend of Rogue's from England. Given that she's really Mystique in disguise, this makes her a literal example.
  • The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has American actor Hal Smith as both Owl and his younger cousin Dexter.
  • VeggieTales gives us stuffy Brit Archibald Asparagus, Evil Brit Scallion #1, and the Silly Songs announcer... all voiced by Iowa native Phil Vischer.
  • Pet Alien: The American Jess Harnell voices Swanky and Granville, both of whom have British accents.
  • This was more or less averted on Phineas and Ferb, in which Ferb was originally voiced by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who does hail from Britain. However, starting with the Milo Murphy's Law episode "The Phineas and Ferb Effect" and continuing on with all P & F-related productions (including a continuation of the original show!), Ferb's replacement voice actor, David Errigo, Jr., plays this straight, hailing from New York.

    Real Life 
  • The American astronomer Edwin Hubble spent two years at Oxford University beginning in 1910, and fell in love with England. A scholar who'd known him in America met him again at Oxford:
    He was dressed in plus-fours, a Norfolk jacket with leather buttons, and a huge cap. He also sported a cane and spoke in a British accent I could scarcely understand ... Those two years had transformed him, seemingly, into a phony Englishman, as phony as his accent.
    • Same thing with the Canadian writer Robertson Davies, who kept the Oxford accent that he picked up from university for the rest of his life.
  • Within a year of spending much of her time in England, as well as being married to an Englishman, Madonna somewhat notoriously, and improbably for the amount of time passed, began to display a bit of an English (and a hilariously fake one too) accent seeping into her speech. Granted, Madonna had spent the previous two decades as a convincing fake New Yorker (seeing as though she's actually from Michigan)....
  • Kenneth Branagh had an Irish accent when he was young (seeing as his family was from Belfast), but affected an English accent to avoid bullying at school. It seems that it's become his natural accent.
  • In a subversion many viewers assume Irish actress Katie McGrath sounds a little 'English' because she lived in Britain for a long time. In fact she was living in Ireland right up until the start of Merlin and her native Wicklow/South Dublin accent sounded quite English to begin with. The fact that she played British characters in Dracula and Jurassic World helped with the facade - but fans who know the difference can tell she's Irish.
  • Richard Burton was Welsh, but early in his career adopted an Oxbridge accent because he felt that his natural accent would hurt his career. His real accent can be heard in Under Milk Wood (which was written by a Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, and set in a fictional Welsh village).
  • Christian Bale likewise lost his Welsh accent at a young age and speaks in an English one nowadays.
  • T.S. Eliot, born in St. Louis, became a naturalized British citizen in the late 1920s and for the rest of his life affected a decidedly more British accent.
  • Bill Bryson managed to invert this trope. He lived in the UK for most of his professional life without picking up a British accent, but he became so much of an Anglophile that he gained a reputation for being "more British than the British", something that real Britons find equally endearing and annoying.
  • This video takes shots at the number of foreign-born players who are part of the English Cricket team.
  • Deborah Kerr was actually Scottish, but went to school in Bristol and had lost her accent by the time she started acting. As such, Hollywood cast her frequently as an English Rose.
  • Bobby Calloway was born in the UK to Irish parents and moved back when he was eight. However, he didn't lose his accent and comments that he's treated as if he is a Brit when his entire family is Irish. Ironically he's maintained that he can't fake an Irish accent at all.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Lord and Lady Mingeworthy

They aren't actually British, but they sure as Hell will try to make you think they are.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

Example of:

Main / FakeBrit

Media sources:

Report