Going Native

I was watching American Gangster and it struck me that Russel Crowe's leading roles in big films have different nationalities. An American in American Gangster, A Beautiful Mind, and The Insider; Spanish (or Roman) in Gladiator; Canadian in Mystery, Alaska (ok, technically American), British in Master and Commander.

By and large American characters are played by American leading men (and the occassional Englishman with, when one is attempted at all, a horribly mangled accent). Brits are cast to play European roles almost exclusively (no doubt because the American twang is a bitch to fake unless you're Hugh Laurie, and the US movie-going public is already convinced all twentieth century German and Russian soldiers had been educated at the Royal Shakespearean Company (who, no doubt, learned their accents from the Romans in some giant lecture held just after the Colloseum was built) so why bother with anything other than your native accent?).

And remember, we're talking leading men here, not character actors, who can be counted on to fufill any role (and accent) required brilliantly. (Peter Sellers gets lumped in with these chaps - best "worst French accent" ever.)

Examples:
Gregory Peck - To Kill a Mockingbird, MacArthur, How the West Was Won, Guns of Navarone, etc.
Cary Grant - An Affair to Remember, The Bishop's Wife, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday
George Clooney - Three Kings, Michael Clayton, Intolerable Cruelty, O Brother Where Art Thou?
Liam Neeson - Schindler's List (German), K-19 The Widowmaker (Russian), Les Miserable (French), Michael Collins (Irish), Rob Roy (Scottish), etc
Sean Connery - Hunt for Red October (Russian), and my personal favorite, Highlander (Spanish)(I'm not kidding).

The question is, who's the most travelled? Who's the xenophile? I can't come up with anyone to top Neeson, can you?

Seriously, though, Highlander - a movie set in, and named for, the Highlands of Scotland, a stone's throw from Connery's native Wales - the casting director, after landing arguably the most famous male lead on the planet, a native casts Sean Connery, of Wales, in a movie set in nearby Scotland, as a Spaniard. I'm not kidding. He plays Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez. This has got to be the worst casting decision in movie history. Ever.

Also of note, Liam Neeson's turn as an American from the South in Next of Kin. Not a leading role, (he plays second fiddle to late-80's dreamboat Patrick Swayze) Neeson is Briar Gates.

"Truman [Patrick Swayze], a Chicago cop, takes on the mob to find the killer of his brother. Meanwhile, another of his brothers, Briar [Neeson] (a hillbilly) decides to find the killer himself. "

A hillbilly! Best role ever, man. Best role ever.

The movie ends when Briar gets himself killed in a shootout and Swayze's entire hillbilly clan piles their shotguns, hunting dogs, broken bottles, ferrets, and bb guns into a couple of vans, drive pell-mell into the city, and basically kill every mobster they can lay their hands on. It's hilarious.


-t