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"Don't you hate it when you find out some really cool actor you like is actually Canadian?"
Fake Americans are usually Canadians, British or Irish (although Aussies, New Zealanders, and even South Africans have been known to fake American). This is usually done for biographical reasons, to allow for a familial relationship with another character with an American accent, or to portray a character as stereotypically American.
According to a documentary, in 2008 one-third of all piloted American TV series had British people in a starring or main supporting role, so this is expanding almost beyond the boundaries of trope. There are honestly so many actors playing fake Americans in games, tv shows, and movies as of late, most people that aren't familiar with many of the actors from across the pond assume they're American.
Britons who essay an American accent will usually opt to make the accent "colorful", and preferably Eastern. Expect to hear something along the lines of a) "salty" New Englander; b) Connecticut "blue-blood"; c) New Yorker, typically of the "Brooklyn" variety; or d) Southern, usually something from Georgia or the Carolinas but occasionally Appalachian, Ozark, or even Texan. This is because the Eastern accents share many phonetic quirks with British dialects, such as the broadening of vowels or the dropping of "r's." It is rare to hear one of these actors attempt, say, a California accent - but it is not unheard of. In those cases, overcorrection of final "r"s is a common tell.
Note that this trope does not apply to non-American actors who are not trying to disguise their accent or origin. Nor should it apply to foreign born actors raised in America such as Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as long as they don't have to fake an accent. America is a nation of immigrants after all, and it isn't all that unusual to meet people who were born or raised overseas, or natural-born Americans who carry an accent from growing up in an ethnic neighborhood. Expect such situations to be Lampshaded, however, especially if the actor in question has a relatively heavy accent, like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A version of Fake Nationality, along with Fake Brit and Fake Irish. If the character is called upon to "fake" the accent that's really theirs, it's a case of Lampshade Hanging, of the sub-type How's Your British Accent?. Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping is quite common, and a few careless examples end up Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
This can also be done within the United States, if someone is expected to speak with a very distinctive accent other than their own, e.g. actors with "neutral" accents doing a Minnesota or Georgia accent.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Patlabor's Kanuka Clancy is supposed to be a NYC cop of Hawaiian descent, but her voice actor's awkward, heavily accented English says otherwise.
- Revy in Black Lagoon a Chinese-American, born in New York. In the episodes set in Japan, she gets a few lines in thickly-accented and stilted English, laden with profanity.
- The English Dub for Mad Bull 34 was done by a British company, thus the VAs speak in really cheesy (and profanity-laden) New Yorker accents.
Films — Animation
- Cary Elwes does a terrible Texas accent playing Donald Curtis in the Disney dub of Porco Rosso.
Literature
- Australian Nick Cave wrote And the Ass Saw the Angel, really demonstrating his fascination with the American south, going as far as to write, at least partially, in American south phonetics.
- Hugh Laurie also wrote a novel called The Gun Seller, in which certain of the American characters speak in a distinctly 'American' way, essentially by cursing excessively. Others talk completely normally. It's all based on whether or not we're meant to like them.
- Eddie Izzard's American imitation also ends up like this. Americans apparently talk very loudly and swear every other word.
- And are also Texan. ("Talk Bri'ish t' mah kidz!")
- In the comicbook Preacher, an Irish vampire on one occasion impersonates his Texan friend, le stories.
- There are also a disproportionate number of indeterminate Southerners. Apparently a really broad Texa Georgiana accent is easier than New England or Midwestern speech.
- In the Audio Book version of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Stephen Briggs reads Maurice's lines in a pseudo-American accent, making him sound even more like a used car salesman.
Music
- David Sylvian spoke with a very bad attempt at an American accent in the late 90s to early 2000s, as he was living in the US and apparently his young child couldn't understand him. When he left his wife and returned to the UK, he returned to an English accent. His English accent has also gradually changed from lower class to upper-middle class over the years, probably due to this being easier to understand for the many Japanese people he has worked with.
Music Videos
- In the music video for Genesis' Jesus He Knows Me, Phil Collins portrays an unscrupulous televangelist, complete with the American dialect. It is also a nod to his guest role as a televangelist in Miami Vice.
Video Games
- The American soldiers in Hogs Of War were voiced (as were all the other character voices) by Rik Mayall and Marc Silk. (However, all the characters in the game are essentially a collection of stereotypes, anyway.)
- In Fallout 3, US President John Henry Eden is voiced by Malcolm McDowell. He adds a slight folksy twang to his voice, but otherwise does nothing to hide his obviously British accent, even though John Henry Eden is supposed to be from Kentucky. Of course, the fact that he is an AI and supposed to be an amalgamation of all the best, past US presidents, the earliest two dozen or so would have been British citizens or the sons of British citizens could be to blame.
- The Lone Wanderer's father, James, is voiced by Liam Neeson, who hardly even tries to hide his native Irish accent.
- In the first couple Rainbow Six games, the operatives, despite coming from countless ethnic/language backgrounds, all have American accents. Although the terrorists in the second game do have foreign accents, and the announcer has a British accent.
- Terry Bogard in Fatal Fury and The King Of Fighters is an American character who speaks English. Unfortunately, his voice actor is clearly a Japanese man who does not even know English, thus resulting in such gems as "C'MAON! Gitseeeryus!" or "Laavwoire!" or "Ahyu okaeey? BUSTAH WURFU!"
- The voice actor for Barry Burton in the original Resident Evil, Barry Gjerde, is Danish, his accent only adding to the hilarity or the already poorly written and terribly acted story.
- Mark Meer (the guy who plays Commander Shepard) is Canadian. He hides it pretty well, most of the time.
- Though it's hypothetically possible that Shepard is Canadian...
- At the beginning of Mass Effect 3, he has been staying at a military base in Vancouver for the past few months, so one can assume he is Canadian. Although Anderson is there too, even though he is British by birth.
- Another fact that supports this: Female Shepard's voice actress, Jennifer Hale, is also Canadian.
- Fox McCloud is this in Star Fox Adventures, but only that game. (Probably due to the game being both made and recorded in the UK.) He sounds fairly neutral most of the time, but makes a couple slip-ups with regards to British vs. American pronounciations. (American "been" rhymes with "when" or "pin," and not "clean", Fox!)
- In Call of Duty: Black Ops, American black ops operative Alex Mason is played by Australian Sam Worthington... whose strong Aussie accent slips through frequently. Though in his defence, when it doesn't slip, it's actually quite convincing.
- As aggressively American as they otherwise, fully half the members of the Bad Company are played by non-Americans; Haggard's voice actor is Canadian, while Marlowe's is actually Norwegian.
- Conker (half of the time, at least).
- Quantic Dreams games Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy were both recorded in Europe but with the cast all playing Americans. You can often hear the accents slipping through in both games...
- English actor Robin Atkin Downes voices American Travis Touchdown in the No More Heroes games. He's also voiced Cyclops in a couple games, Kazuhira Miller in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and George Washington in Assassins Creed III.
- Suffolk, Britain-born actress June Brown (of Eastenders fame) plays sexy vampiress Vivi in Brain Dead 13; and she does this in her best Southern Belle/Negro accent quite well.
- In the original Sam & Max game, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Max is voiced by Australian actor Nick Jameson.
- The Scottish Alastair Duncan as American Senator Steven Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. His accent is pretty good for the most part, but it does slip during his "college football" speech.
Web Original
- Almost all of (English) LittleKuriboh's voices – except for Bakura – in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. Justified by LittleKuriboh trying to sound something like the characters he's parodying, although inverted with Yami as that character sounds more British with each episode.
- Similarly, MasakoX (English) in Naruto The Abridged Series. Masako also plays a fake Canadian (Rock Lee, eh?).
- Bandit Keith, in... Canada.
- Park Bench
- In Philthon Jones, this was attempted a couple of times, in "The Murder of Lord Avocado
 " and "The Meeting".
- Jessica Lee Rose of lonelygirl15 adopted an American accent for the character Bree. Occasional lapses into her New Zealand accent prompted early speculation on whether or not the blog was a hoax.
Western Animation
- A LOT of "American" cartoons over the years have had the voice recording done in Canada (originally Toronto, nowadays Vancouver) due to lower costs.
- Anthony LaPaglia also did the voice of a Noo Yawk/Noo Joisey mafia-type skua in Happy Feet; Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman put on Southern accents as
Elvis Memphis and Marilyn Monroe Norma Jean.
- Rattrap in Transformers: Beast Wars has an American accent, but an Australian voice actor (Scott McNeil) who lives in Canada.
- English actor Phil Hayes originally voiced Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog's Scratch with a New York-style accent. In fact, every major character in the series (except for Sonic) has a Canadian or British actor.
- Which makes since since the series was recorded in Vancouver (except for Jaleel White, who is an American based in LA).
- In fact, the only actor in the show besides White who doesn't fit this is the late Long John Baldry, who never made any attempt to hide his English accent when playing Robotnik.
- Alan Rickman guest stars on an episode of King of the Hill, playing the part of the "king" of the local Renaissance Faire, of course using his own British accent. At the end of the episode he drops that to reveal his "real" voice, which is a terrible attempt at a Texas accent.
- In the 1990s animated series X-Men, most American characters, such as Cyclops, Jean Grey, or Jubilee are voiced by Canadian actors. Professor X is voiced by an Englishman, and Rogue is voiced by Lenore Zann, an Australian raised in Canada (who spent time in LA before moving back to Canada).
- This is also true for the 2000's-era X-Men Evolution, which was also recorded in Vancover.
- Jennifer Hale, Canadian by birth, in many of her roles, namely Spider-Man: The Animated Series as Black Cat and Justice League as Zatanna.
- However, while she was born in Canada, she grew up in the US (Her parents are from Alabama).
- Tara Strong, who is Canadian by birth but lives in L.A., in all kinds of roles both female and male, such as Batgirl in Gotham Knights, Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls, Raven in Teen Titans, both Timmy Turner and Poof in The Fairly OddParents, Ben Tennyson in Western Animation/Ben10, and both Princess Clara and Toot Blaustein in Drawn Together.
- As opposed to his awful accent in Black Hawk Down, Jason Isaacs does a pretty convincing American accent as Admiral Zhao
- Iroh's Japanese accent was never modified or explained in-series. The decision to keep the character's accent even after Mako's death was probably because the Fire Nation is based on Imperial Japan.
- Parodied on The Simpsons episode "Burns' Heir"note season five episode where Mr. Burns makes Bart Simpson his heir after Bart gets rejected from his audition and takes out his anger on vandalizing Mr. Burns' property where Mr. Burns hires fake Americans to play the Simpsons family and Burns got Cockney Michael Caine (voiced by Dan Castallaneta) to play Homer (though that's more of a joke on Michael Caine taking on roles just to get paid) while Lisa is voiced by a bald male midget from Estonia (and is the same one that would later be seen on the episode "Radioactive Man" as Milhouse's stunt double).
- In The Amazing Worldof Gumball, British actress Teresa Gallagher affects an American accent for her role of Nicole Watterson.
- Actually, with the exception of the Watterson kids, every character on the show is played by a British actor doing an Amercian accent.
- In Spider Man 1967, most of the American characters were voiced by Canadian actors.
Real Life
- Most people outside of North America can't tell the difference between American and Canadian accents anyway. Also, Canada and the United States form a single dialect continuum, with areas near either side of the border sounding almost indistinguishable from each other. Besides, if we were to list every Canadian who's played an American on TV or in film we'd be here forever.
- Canadians from Ontario, British Columbia, the Prairie Provinces*
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba , and Anglophone Quebeckers already sound reasonably American. Newfies, Maritimers, people from the territories, and (obviously) French Quebecois usually have more distinctive accents, though how apparent the difference is will vary widely among both speakers and listeners.
- Gillian Anderson, oddly enough. Though she was born in America, she moved to England when she was two and didn't move back until she was eleven, and by then her speech patterns had been set. She had to work to lose it when she went into acting, and if you pay attention to the early episodes of The X-Files it slips through at times. Now that she's moved back to England, she's got the accent back in full-force.
- She still puts on an American accent when she's interviewed in the U.S.
- Though not technically the same thing, it is funny how so many British singers who, when they speak, can barely be understood, yet when they sing, it's clear as day.
- Very much evident in the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" where the boy's choir sings with their normal British accents, while Pink Floyd sing with somewhat Americanized accents.
- Shirley Manson of Garbage sings with an American accent, even though her normal speaking voice is Scottish-accented.
- Emily Blunt seems to play this for at least half of her roles.
- Christian Bale, when playing an American character, will keep the accent during promotion and advertising. To hear his natural (and very prominent) Welsh accent can be quite jarring.
- Stan Laurel was born in England.
- Bob Hope was born in England. His father was English and his mother was Welsh. Listening to old footage of him performing, you'd never know he wasn't an all-American boy from Ohio.
- The late Richard Dawson of Family Feud and Match Game fame was born and raised in England (with a very British name, Colin Lionel Emm) and only came over to the U.S. as a young actor sometime in the 1950s (when he was already in his twenties). Yet when he was a game show superstar in the 1970s and '80s, he sounded just like he was born and raised somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa.
- Jerry Springer was born in London, though that was only because his parents were Eastern European refugees fleeing Nazi oppression (and most of their families ended up dying in the concentration camps). The Springer family moved to Queens, NY, when Springer was only about four years old or so. Jerry's accent today is New York mixed with a dash of Ohio (where he served as Cincinnati's mayor).
- Cary Grant, who was born in the UK and later took American citizenship. His British accent slowly dwindled over the course of his career, but he never quite sounded American. He almost always played one, however.
- Malin Åkerman, who has portrayed many American roles, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and raised in Ontario, Canada.
- Cary Elwes usually does a Midwestern-ish accent when playing American characters, though he did a vaguely Southern sounding one in Twister. Helena Bonham-Carter, Nicholas Hoult, and Tim Roth have all done ambiguously American accents.
- Pro Skater Bob Burnquist is from Brazil. To some, he seems to have lost his native accent.
- Rapper Slick Rick is British.
- Although he lived in the US for so long that he began to speak with a southern drawl.
- According to Nicola Bryant, who played Peri Brown on Doctor Who, the show tried to cover up the fact that she was not actually American. She was instructed to use her American accent in interviews and public appearances.
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