Whose phoney accent is best?
Louise Schwartzkoff reports on the Aussies in contention. WHEN Mad Max hit international cinemas 30 years ago, the film’s US distributors insisted on dubbing the Australian accents with American ones. Against a backdrop of bleaching sun and parched highways, the actors’ voices, including Mel Gibson’s, were replaced with an American twang. The distributors felt audiences in the US would not warm to Australian actors. Times have changed. While our Cates, Nicoles, Russells and Hughs glitter on the big screen, an even larger army of Australians is invading the living rooms of American couch potatoes. Of course, just because producers will employ an Australian actor doesn’t mean they will tolerate Strine. With the odd exception (such as Jesse Spencer in House), Australians on US television must out-Yank the Yanks. To find out whether the Australian invaders have mastered the accent, Green Guide recruited Katherine Hopwood-Poulsen, a vocal coach who specialises in American dialects. Her verd
