18 Actors Who Were Pressured To Lose, Change, Or Exaggerate Their Accents To Have A Career

Oftentimes, it makes sense for an actor to put on an accent for a role, like when they're playing a real person in a biopic (like Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in Elvis) or when being from a certain city is a big part of the character's personal identity (like Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey). Sometimes, however, actors are pressured to either lose or play up their natural accents in order to get roles.

Here are 18 actors who were pressured to change their accent to get roles:

1. In a 2024 TikTok video promoting her movie We Live in Time, Florence Pugh said, "It’s my second movie of doing my own voice. But it has been a long time. In fact, many people think that when I speak in my accent in interviews, that I'm lying and I'm putting on a fake one, and that isn't true.”

Previously, she told the Off Menu podcast, "So many people think I'm American. Then, when I do things publicly, like if I present an award or I'm on a stage talking, they're like, 'That is the fakest English accent I have ever heard.' What do you think I... how... what? Sometimes when I've done Instagram Stories, [they're] like, 'Oh my god, Florence Pugh sounds like she's putting on an accent,' and I'm like, 'No, that is me. That's literally me. So sorry.'"

2. In the same TikTok, Florence's costar Andrew Garfield said, "I think it’s the first time I’m using my [real voice]. Yeah, that’s true. I think it's true."

Andrew has used an English accent for films like Never Let Me Go and The Other Boleyn Girl, but he slightly altered his natural accent.

3. On a 2024 episode of her podcast Mind Your Own, Lupita Nyong'o said, "[At the Yale School of Drama] I made this pact with myself that I would learn how to sound American in a way that would guarantee me a career in acting. Because obviously, I didn't know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that."

She said that she spent several days a week taking voice lessons, but when a casting director complimented her on not having an accent, she was "at once so elated and also so crushed."

After she graduated, she immediately booked 12 Years a Slave. Ahead of the press tour, she decided to tell her publicist, "I've decided that from tomorrow, I am going to return to my original accent. I want to send a message that being an African is enough. They had never heard me speak in a Kenyan accent."

4. Sofía Vergara once tried to get rid of her accent by going to voice coaches.

In 2015, she told The Howard Stern Show, "I thought it was, you know, I'll have more opportunities. I didn't understand why, like, for example, Salma Hayek or Penelope [Cruz]...still had those accents, and they were working. I'm like, 'I'm gonna go to LA, and I'm gonna fix it.' It wasn't that easy. I spent a lot of money and a lot of time. Then I was doing very bad in the auditions because I was just thinking about the words, not the acting."

It was a "nightmare," so she decided to try to see what roles she could get with her natural accent.

5. In 2020, Kumail Nanjiani told Variety's #REPRESENT: Success Stories, "I have a Pakistani accent, but [during my early auditions] they would be like, 'Could you make it funnier? Lean in a little bit.' And at some point, I decided I just wasn't going to do that."

He continued, "There are certain parts that require a thicker Pakistani or Indian accent, and that's totally fine, but I just didn't want the comedy to just be coming from someone exaggerating their accent."

He also said that he refused to "play up" his accent in major auditions.

"So there was a really, really big movie, actually, that I auditioned for, and I was a taxi driver, and the director was like, 'Hey, could you play up the accent a little bit?' And I was like, 'I'm sorry, I won't.' And then the guy felt really bad. And I was like, 'No, it's fine. I'm just not going to do it. If that's what you want, I'm not your guy.' And then that movie was hugely successful. Still, I don't regret it," he said.

6. In 2024, Olivia Cooke told The Times that she feels "really sad about" losing her Northern English accent. She said, "I do put on a voice when I'm speaking to someone with a different upbringing to me. I'm proud of where I come from, but it was a source of embarrassment because I didn't feel as intelligent as others. I speak about that to my therapist all the time and try not to do it, but I do have a chip on my shoulder about being working class."

She continued, "It is a really exclusive industry. It's not equitable — the arts are not funded in state schools. But drama class is not just about getting into this industry — it can help kids to grow in confidence and feel accepted. I look around and it's so wonderful when I hear a regional accent on set. Soon, there's only going to be a certain type of actor."

7. In 2022, Diego Luna told IndieWire, "When I was very young, like 20 years ago, there was a whole conversation about losing your accent. They used to call it 'neutralizing,' as if it was something you could just get rid of. It was a fear of understanding."

He said, "It wasn't a decision to keep my accent [as Andor in Rogue One]. If they hire me, I come with this. But when they cast me, they're clearly sending a message that they're trying to represent a similar world to the one we experience, where people talk differently and have rich cultural and language diversity."

8. In 2017, Awkwafina told Vice, "I've walked out of auditions where the casting director all of a sudden changed her mind and asked for accents. I refuse to do accents."

She continued, "And I think like — so far like a lot of the parts I've gone out for have been really real characters, and being Asian is not part of their plotline. I'm OK with having an Asian aspect if it's done in a genuine way. I'm not OK with someone writing the Asian experience for an Asian character. Like that's annoying, and I make it very clear, I don't ever go out for auditions where I feel like I'm making a minstrel out of our people."

However, in 2022, she addressed criticism she's faced for appropriating African American Vernacular English and using a "blaccent."

On Twitter, she said, "[A]s a non-black POC, I stand by the fact that I will always listen and work tirelessly to understand the history and context of AAVE."

Som activists criticized her statement as "too little, too late."

9. In 2023, Stephanie Hsu told the New York Times, "At the time when I was finishing school and living in New York, those roles were not available in the mainstream. And I had no interest in selling myself or just shrinking myself to an inappropriate cameo just so that I could say I added one more thing to my résumé. I remember in 2012, I went into a commercial audition, and they were like, 'OK, could you do it again, but with a more Asian accent?' And I said, 'I'm so sorry, but this role is not for me. I don't do that, and I'm not interested in this part.'"

She continued, "I walked out, and I was fuming. I sat next to this actor and asked him, 'Did they ask you to do an accent?' He was Asian and spoke perfect English, and he was like, 'Well, yeah.' And I'm like, 'Did you do it?' And he said, 'I have no other choice.' I understand that people want to make it and they only see one path and have to bend and fold to have a life in the arts, but I always thought if that's how it's going to go for me, then I'm going to work at a bar or in a wood shop. I have to make things that matter to me. Life is too short to completely dehumanize yourself."

10. At EW Fest in 2015, Aziz Ansari said, "Should I do an accent? Should I not do the accent? That's a thing that a lot of minority actors grapple with. I once was asked to audition for Transformers with Michael Bay. And it was a role for a call center guy who does an accent. And I was like, 'No, I'm not doing it.'"

He continued, "Ravi [Patel] was like, 'I'll do it!' And Ravi did it, and he probably made decent money being the call center guy. I understand. You have to work, and some people don't think it's a problem. You do it."

11. In 2022, Billy Boyd told the My Time Capsule podcast, "I hate people saying they can't understand what I'm saying…As a Scottish actor, every script I get that's got a Scottish character in it, there's always the gag that somebody can't understand them. Always. Anything I do now if that gag's in it, I say I won't do it. The gag is overdone and not realistic. It's just like, stop being stereotypical, you know? Just because someone has a different accent."

"So for the writers who write that gag, I apologize when I lose my mind in the writing room. It's just that I've read it so many times," he said.

12. John Cho originally declined the role of Dusty Wong in Big Fat Liar because he was asked to use an accent, and he didn't want kids who watched the movie to think laughing at people's accents was okay.

However, the director permitted him to not use a fake accent, so he ultimately accepted the part.

13. In 2020, Matthew Rhys told The Times, "My agent said, 'Look, just go in as an American, because if you go in as a Welsh person, all they will do when you audition is listen for when you slip up.' But it felt so fake, and I just thought I was gonna be found out."

"When you're improvising in a dialect — in an already tense, heightened situation — I was prone to making a mistake. And then you can see on their faces like, 'Where is this kid meant to be from or where is he from?' I soon gave that up because I couldn't deal with it. The pressure got to me," he said.

14. When Ava Gardner moved from North Carolina to California, MGM assigned her a voice coach to get rid of her Southern American accent.

Her contract required her to study drama, elocution, and voice production.

15. In 2021, Steven Yeun told Variety's Awards Chatter Podcast, "The first audition I had in Chicago was called Awesome '80s Prom, which was an immersive improvised show, where you have this John Hughes spectrum of characters like Ferris Bueller. Then you have your 'Long Duk Dongs,' and I auditioned with Ferris Bueller's opening monologue. And they said, 'That was good. Can you do that all again in an Asian accent?' And I'll be honest with you. I knew that I didn't want to do that. The system had no clue that's not what I wanted. We were just in a different time. And so I remember I did a shitty accent and phoned it, and they still wanted me anyway because that's how far and few between Asian actors were. So they call, and they said, 'We'd like to hire you.' And I said, 'No.'"

"And they got really mad. And I was like, "Oh, that's not a good first step in this business. I pissed somebody off," he said.

16. In 2024, Jack Lowden told Casting Networks, "I very rarely get to use my accent. I think Dunkirk was one of the few where I was allowed to use my accent, and even then I had to convince Mr. [Christopher] Nolan that it would be okay to let me be Scottish and fly in the air. I very rarely get to use my own. That’s more of a sort of UK-based thing that there’s a natural pull towards certain accents and a push away from other accents on the British Isles."

"I love working in my accent. I think a lot of actors do. I think you can tap into things a lot quicker," he said.

17. In a 2016 editorial for NBC News, Justin Chon said that, after he drove two hours for an audition, another actor who'd just gone "immediately told [him] disgustedly, 'They want an Asian accent.'" So, he "decided not to enter the audition and drove the two-hour commute back home."

He wrote, "Early in my career, I did a fake-ass Chinese accent for a series of T-Mobile commercials in 2003. At the time, I thought, 'Hey, if I don't do it, someone else will.' I immediately regretted the decision once I started shooting the spot. Since then, I have been able to navigate Hollywood without having to put myself in that situation again."

18. And finally, in 2023, Arnold Schwarzenegger told The Graham Norton Show, "I had an English coach and an acting coach and a speech coach and an accent-removal coach, who has passed away since then, but I mean, I should have otherwise gotten my money back. The bottom line is, I worked on it. I remember, he says, 'You know you always say three [incorrectly]. It’s three, with a T-H.' So he had me say, '3,333 and 1/3 with the T-H and not with the S.'"

He continued, "But the funny thing was all the stuff that was said, the Hollywood producers and the directors and all the geniuses saying this was an obstacle for me to become a leading man became an asset. Because when I did Conan the Barbarian, John Milius, the director, said to the press, 'If we wouldn’t have had Schwarzenegger, we would have had to build one,' because I was the only one that had the muscles to play that character the way Frank Frazetta painted it, and the way Robert E. Howard has written about it…And then when I did Terminator, Jim Cameron said, 'What made Terminator work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine.'"