Finessing a role in Hollywood can be hard for Southerners
HOW DO ACTORS FROM THE SOUTH DEAL WITH THEIR ACCENTS?
From Scarlett O’Hara to the recent biopic of Hank Williams starring British actor Tom Hiddleston, Hollywood has often been indifferent to making Southern characters nuanced and real. At a time when actors are held to high standards of authenticity, actors from the South say such artistic deference has rarely been paid to them. Then again, they also say they’ve thrived in and beyond their Southernness.
Here, nine performers who’ve worked for decades in theatre, film and TV reflect on their early years, how their accents helped or hindered them and why they have appreciation now for being “some of the strangest people.”
SISSY SPACEK (from Quitman, Tex.): I was completely naive about people judging me for how I sounded. I thought everybody else had an accent. Terrence Malick for Badlands. That was the most important early film I did. My Southern accent got me that role.
BETH GRANT (Kenansville, N.C.): I got a bachelor of fine arts and learned how to lose my accent. Then (in) New York I’m competing with actors who weren’t Southern. Guess what I ended up playing? Southern roles. Eventually I thought, “I’m just going to be me.”
ANDIE MacDOWELL (Gaffney, S.C.): I started as a model and went in for an ad to say “oil-free shampoo.” Where I grew up, you say “oil” with just one syllable, like “ole.” The whole room broke out into laughter.
BARRY CORBIN (Lamesa, Tex.): I did two seasons at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. I did Henry V on Broadway. I did a lot of New York accents. But funny enough I never played anybody from the South. DALE DICKEY (Knoxville, Tenn.): I moved to New York in the ‘80s (and) saw “Broadcast News” starring (Southern actress) Holly Hunter. I thought, “Wow, she’s the lead and has that accent?” I had never seen a heroine with a Southern accent who wasn’t depicted in a cotton field, a flood or as a prairie woman. I was blown away.
JIM BEAVER (Irving, Tex.): Everybody in my family had distinct, thick accents. But for some reason, I never talked like that. Texans would ask me, “Where you from, boy?” It wasn’t until I moved to New York and started auditioning for plays that people said, “That was really nice, but can you lose the Texas accent?”
BILLY BOB THORNTON (Malvern, Ark.): There is some prejudice against actors from the South. I didn’t really get auditions when I was coming up in Hollywood. They either wanted me to play a hillbilly or a killer, sometimes at the same time! Sometimes they’d even say I wasn’t Southern enough. Really, I am not Southern enough? They wanted me to talk like Big Daddy in the Mississippi-set Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. WALTON GOGGINS (Lithia Springs, Ga.): I was 19 when I moved to Los Angeles. I knew no one. I was grateful to be pigeonholed as Southern. At least I was in a hole! MacDOWELL: My first movie was Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan and they ended up dubbing over my voice with Glenn Close’s. That was a nice slap in the face. Yes, I was very green, but you say an actress who never acted before is perfect for the role and that’s what you do? GOGGINS: My acting coach, David Legrant, said: “You have to change how other people perceive you. That means changing the sounds that come out of your mouth.” So I read Shakespeare sonnets out loud to myself while I was valet parking in the San Fernando Valley.
SPACEK: Brian De Palma didn’t at all comment on my accent in Carrie. I was so focused on being the daughter of Piper Laurie’s character. If you listen, she put a little Southern into her accent and that took the oomph off me. MARGO MARTINDALE (Jacksonville, Tex.): When I did Nobody’s Fool with writerdirector Robert Benton — he’s from Waxahachie, Texas — we became very close. It was set in a small New York town. He’d say: “Honey, I’m going to have to keep on you about that accent.” MacDOWELL: Mike Newell gave me no direction about my accent in Four Weddings and a Funeral. And there was only one word that Harold Ramis corrected me on in all of Groundhog Day: the word “really.” I would say ‘rilly.’ Now I say it like I’m from Chicago because that’s where Harold was from. THORNTON: I know for me, when I am not playing a Southerner, I have to make sure my diction is perfect. DICKEY: Winter’s Bone was set in Missouri. East Tennessee, the hills, the backwoods — they’re all the same. I fit in that world. I met people who didn’t think I was acting and that that (director) Debra Granik just found me there. GOGGINS: The Shield writers leaned into my Southernness, but I never spoke with an accent on the show. It was about exploring this person who was like me: from the South but had been living in Los Angeles for nine years. Then with Justified, playing Boyd Crowder, I had such an appreciation for sounding Southern again. The longer I’d been away from the South, the more I had an affinity for it.
MARTINDALE: Nothing suited me better than Justified. I could break all the rules. Claudia in The Americans was the opposite: all about restraint and economy. I tried to sound as if I’d learned English from someone who wasn’t an English-speaking person who thought she didn’t have an accent. GRANT: When I hear actors doing fake Southern accents, it does hurt me. Why wouldn’t people want the absolutely most authentic person they could find? BEAVER: As much as I idolize Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, I can’t stand to watch the remake of Cape Fear. De Niro simply has no idea how to play a Southerner.
DICKEY: I’ve had people ask, “Can you teach me a Southern accent?” I’m like, ‘OK What state? What part of the state? What culture?”
GRANT: Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men is letter-perfect. He’s from Texas, but he got the almost effeminate quality of those West Texas boys. Non-Southern actors always make those characters too macho. He makes me want to weep it’s so good. MARTINDALE: Actors can almost never get into the music of the accent except for maybe Meryl Streep? She can do it — hands down. SPACEK: There isn’t a non Southern actor better at the accent than Jessica Lange. But the hardest thing now is that movies are made where there is a tax incentive. It used to be movies were made wherever the film was set. Hearing all the local accents was so helpful. MacDOWELL: I think I’m better as an actor when I have a little bit of Southern in my work. There’s something about the timing and humour. Sex, Lies, and Videotape had that low-country, New Orleans feel to it; slow, hot and humid! I milked my accent a little bit for that one. Southern characters are my favourite to play because I think they’re some of the strangest people.
SPACEK: I’m doing a Maine accent now for Castle Rock on Hulu and oh my gosh, I’ve never worked on anything so hard in my life! But I love my Southern accent. The more excited or mad I get, or as my husband says, as soon as we cross the Texas state line, it really comes out.
GRANT: I’ve done a few movies without my accent. But I used it in The Mindy Project, which gave me a whole new legion of fans.
GOGGINS: A young actor recently said, “I’m from Georgia, and you got to know what you mean to the people who’ve followed in your footsteps.” There’s no greater compliment for me. What’s difficult is knowing that I have a child who doesn’t speak like me. He’s being raised in Los Angeles. There’s a part of my story that will only continue in the stories that I tell him, and that’s something I mourn.
MARTINDALE: I’m playing mostly non-Southern people now. I just played New York in the late ‘70s in The Kitchen. I played Down East Maine in another movie. And for another one they said “All we want you to be is not Southern.” The lesson is: You can always get better.