James Marsters

Errol Flynn as Robin Hood? Perfect. American Kevin Costner? Please!

Even Mel Brooks knew enough to get the accent of the beloved character right: He cast London-born Cary Elwes in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." In "Prince of Thieves," however, Costner could hold a bow convincingly, but he couldn’t hold a candle to Flynn, whom casual movie fans may think of as born to speak the King’s English, though he arrived there from Tasmania as a child.

Actors are always saying they love to stretch their acting chops, but when it comes to accents or the persuasive delivery of an idiom, it’s been a hit-and-miss experience for them and for movie-goers.

Recently, Anne Hathaway followed her fellow Americans Gwyneth Paltrow ("Emma," "Shakespeare in Love"), Reese Witherspoon ("Vanity Fair") and Renee Zellweger ("Bridget Jones’s Diary") in taking on a role that would seem to require a British actress — 18th-century novelist Jane Austen in "Becoming Jane." Unlike, say, the casting of Californian James Cromwell as Prince Philip in "The Queen" (and in this movie as the Rev. Austen), Hathaway’s casting caused a bit of a snit among Austenites — "Calamity Jane?" posited a headline on the Guardian Unlimited Web site, which represents three U.K. newspapers.

Fans were fretting because the 24-year-old actress is no plain Jane, as Austen apparently was, and she’s not a Brit, which Austen certainly was.

But when the film opened in the United Kingdom last weekend (it’s set for a summer release in the United States), reviews were positive, with the consensus that it’s a chick-flick of the first order. And on Hathaway’s performance, Mark Adams of the Sunday Mirror wrote she is "sweet and convincing as the willful and passionate Jane."

If Hathaway makes "Becoming Jane" seem easy, it’s apparently a great acting job.

She was quoted in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph as saying all did not go well during filming in Ireland. "I started to sound a bit too much like myself and not at all like Jane. After all that [expletive] accent work, about 80 percent of the dialogue in the film was unusable. I had to go to England to re-record it all."

"The Last King of Scotland" star James McAvoy — a Scottish actor playing the Irish object of Austen’s affections — jumped to his co-star’s defense.

"I think you find the right actor — you don’t find the right accent," said McAvoy, as reported on various entertainment news sites.

"When you find a British person playing JFK or Nixon, some real big American icon, nobody bats an eyelid here," he continued. "We don’t go, ’This is terrible — it should be an American man playing this part,’ so I don’t know why we get so annoyed."

McAvoy was likely referring to Sir Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s "Nixon," but he makes his point.

On this side of the pond, the recent remake of "All the King’s Men" surrounded Sean Penn with a cast of English actors (Hopkins among them) in a tale of Southern politics and corruption. It crashed and burned at the box office, despite precedent for this sort of casting — uppercrust Brit Vivien Leigh as "Gone With the Wind" Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara is perhaps the most blatant example.

Sometimes, it’s good for a laugh — intentional or not — such as New York-born stars in sword-and-sandals/knights-and-castles films that make the scenes comical. We’re reminded of the plausibilities (or lack thereof) annually, with showings of Edward G. Robinson in "The Ten Commandments."

Tony Curtis was a particular offender when the role didn’t match the actor’s particular talents. Any film fan of a certain age has heard the mangled line "Yondah lies the castle of my faddah," uttered by Curtis in "Son of Ali Baba." Enough said.

On the small screen, a recent spate of Aussies and Brits in American roles have put their skills to the test.

The most successful current TV import is Hugh Laurie, who perfectly masks his natural British accent as a cranky but brilliant American doctor on Fox’s "House." Anthony LaPaglia has successfully shed his Australian accent as an American FBI agent on CBS’s "Without a Trace."

In the deep space of Sci Fi Channel’s "Battlestar Galactica," Brit Jamie Bamber suppresses his natural accent with apparent ease — so much so, it’s a shock for most viewers to hear him or Laurie speak out of character and in their natural accents.

In the other direction, American James Marsters put on a cockney accent as the bleached-blond vampire Spike on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," while his "Buffy"/"Angel" co-star, Maryland-born Alexis Denisof, was saddled with a more proper British accent.

On the now defunct Pittsburgh-set CBS drama "The Guardian," star Simon Baker never affected a Pittsburgh accent, but he generally sounded like an American native — except when his native Aussie accent occasionally slipped through.

Getting an accent right is a great way for an actor to get awards.

Laurie’s Dr. House has been a Golden Globes and Emmys favorite. The Academy Awards’ most-nominated actress, Meryl Streep, is the queen of conquering foreign accents, such as Polish in "Sophie’s Choice" and Italian in "Bridges of Madison County."

Most people obviously bought Leonardo DiCaprio’s South African dialect in last year’s "Blood Diamond," which earned the actor an Oscar nomination. But Forest Whitaker proved even more convincing as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin — he took home the golden seal of approval.

As for Hathaway, she might want to brush up on her Pittsburghese — she’s in the process of filming the big-screen version of "Get Smart," taking on the role of Agent 99 played on the TV series by Barbara Feldon, a native of Bethel Park.