History Main / FakeAmerican

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 Creator/NataliePortman (Israeli), Creator/MilaKunis (Ukrainian Jewish), Creator/AnnelieseVanDerPol (Dutch), Creator/SebastianStan (Romanian) and Creator/ElizabethTaylor (British), 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 Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger (who, for the record, does not qualify for this trope because while he was born in Austria, he is now a naturalized American). Note also that the majority of Canada is within the USA's dialect continuum, thus most Canadian actors have absolutely no difficulty faking being a generic American (it's when the accent required ''isn't'' a generic one that this comes into play).

* Actor Connor Trinneer playing chief engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker on Series/StarTrekEnterprise. Tucker is a Main/GeniusDitz character from Florida while Connor Trinneer is from Washington state.

* ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'''s Kanuka Clancy, an NYC cop of Hawaiian descent, is voiced by a Japanese actress in the original version.

* In ''WesternAnimation/ATrollInCentralPark'', the parents of the American character Gus are voiced by Creator/HayleyMills and Creator/JonathanPryce, who are English and Welsh, respectively.

Fake Americans are usually Canadians (the two countries extensively border each other and their generic accents are very hard to distinguish), Brits, Australians or Irish, although 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 [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents American accent]], or to portray a character as stereotypically American. Interestingly enough, the Fake American is not usually Mexican, even though the United States of America and The United Mexican States (official name of Mexico) share two-thirds of their name with each other and the southwestern third of the former was the northern half of the latter before 1848, or Jamaican (has its own distinct accent, known as Jamaican Patois), Belizean, or Indian, even though the three are Anglophone countries like the USA.

Fake Americans are usually Canadians (the two countries' generic accents are very hard to distinguish), Brits, Australians or Irish, although 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 [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents American accent]], or to portray a character as stereotypically American. Interestingly enough, the Fake American is not usually Mexican, even though the United States of America and The United Mexican States (official name of Mexico) share two-thirds of their name with each other and the southwestern third of the former was the northern half of the latter before 1848, or Jamaican (has its own distinct accent, known as Jamaican Patois), Belizean, or Indian, even though the three are Anglophone countries like the USA.

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 Creator/NataliePortman (Israeli), Creator/MilaKunis (Ukrainian Jewish), Creator/SebastianStan (Romanian) and Creator/ElizabethTaylor (British), 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 Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger (who, for the record, does not qualify for this trope because while he was born in Austria, he is now a naturalized American). Note also that the majority of Canada is within the USA's dialect continuum, thus most Canadian actors have absolutely no difficulty faking being a generic American (it's when the accent required ''isn't'' a generic one that this comes into play).

-->-- '''[[Archer/CharacterBlogTropes Sterling Archer]]''', via [[http://twitter.com/codenameduchess/status/7933579112 Twitter]]

* Creator/SamElliott has often played Old West cowboys, and his sonorous deep voice fits the image well. He's originally from Sacramento, California, and spent a large part of his teenage years in Oregon.

* Creator/SamElliot has often played Old West cowboys, and his sonorous deep voice fits the image well. He's originally from Sacramento, California, and spent a large part of his teenage years in Oregon.

* Quick! Where was Creator/SarahMichelleGellar born? If you said "New York City", you're correct -- but you also have a bit too much time on your hands. You'd otherwise have a hard time guessing, since [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer her most famous role]] is that of a Southern Californian.

* Creator/JackNicholson was born in Neptune, New Jersey. This is also the hometown of Danny [=DeVito=] (with whom Nicholson has collaborated on a few occasions), but you'll note that Nicholson's speaking voice (which he doesn't tend to vary in his film roles) is regionally very hard to pin down (a good guess would be Illinois, or perhaps Iowa). One thing's for sure: it's definitely not the {{Joisey}} accent you'd expect from a boy who lived in the Garden State until his senior year of high school. Ironically, Nicholson had to learn his native accent all over again to play fellow New Jerseyan (although born in Indiana) Jimmy Hoffa in ''Film/{{Hoffa}}''.

* ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'''s Kanuka Clancy is supposed to be an NYC cop of Hawaiian descent, but her voice actor's awkward, heavily accented English says otherwise.
* Revy in ''Manga/BlackLagoon'' is 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.[[note]] This is why the dub is preferred by many fans; Revy actually has an American accent...sort of--Maryke Hendrikse, like everyone else in the dub's vocal cast, is Canadian.[[/note]]

* Deliberately invoked in the dub for ''Manga/VideoGirlAi'', which was recorded by Creator/TheOceanGroup in Vancouver. An omake for one episode in the original Japanese had the seiyuu re-record a scene using thick Osaka accents. The dub adapted this to the voice actors acting like they were from the DeepSouth. They're... not that good at it.

* In ''WesternAnimation/ATrollInCentralPark'', the parents are voiced by Creator/HayleyMills and Creator/JonathanPryce, [[OohMeAccentsSlipping both of whom do a particularly poor job of hiding their British accents]].

* 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.

* This is common in professional wrestling, with American wrestlers from one part of the country being billed from somewhere other than their hometown. Wrestling/{{Carmella}}, billed from Staten Island in New York City, was born and raised in the Boston area. Wrestling/NewJack, born in Greensboro, North Carolina and raised in Georgia, was most famously billed from South Central Los Angeles. The most famous example is Wrestling/HulkHogan, born in Georgia and raised in Florida, who has been billed from California for most of his career.

* The vocalists of Alabama 3 are white Brits who do reasonably good impressions of southern African-American accents; on the album version of ''Series/TheSopranos''' theme "Woke Up This Morning", if it wasn't for some distinctly British pronunciations in the opening monologue, you'd never notice.
* Music/IggyAzalea's dirty South accent in her rapping is apparently pretty good, but it's also ''extremely'' divisive among hip-hop fans. Her real accent is rural Australian.

* [=Bis=], the band who performs the ending theme to ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'', is Scottish.
* The Bomfunk MC's, best known for their OneHitWonder "Freestyler", rap with convincing American (of indeterminate location, though) accents. They are Finnish (their lead singer, Raymond Ebanks, was born in the U.K. but grew up in Finland).

Not to be confused with WeAllLiveInAmerica, which is when a creator makes a work based on a foreign country but projects their own country's characteristics on it, e.g. a British writer writing about America but with British elements seeping in, effectively making the ''story'' "fake American".