As a born and raised American westerner, I attribute my deep
and abiding love of Anglophilia to a culture and a nation where truly old
"things" and traditions still exist. We lose our shit out here to a building built in 1920, and
clamor to have it included in the historical registry. Our accents are flat and affect-less, we
are the part of the country where Americans and immigrants came to build new
lives, so our attachments to anything are out of pure sentimentality.
Thus, it is a well-known fact that I fold at the sound of a
British accent because it represents something that is eternally and sorely
lacking in this part of the world.
Let us discuss the following bullet points.
1) Ian McShane, a former member of the Royal Shakespeare
Company, has a voice like a good scotch.
I want it poured over everything.
2) Michael Caine.
He along with Morgan Freeman are my adoptive Grandfathers, and they read
me Dickens aloud every night. I
will put on a widow's veil and properly mourn when Michael Caine passes. If you ever want to fall madly in love,
watch his episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio," and tell me you
don't want to leave the wife for him when he starts speaking in Cockney
rhyme. (I have forewarned the
husband that I will piss myself and scream/sob should I ever encounter Sir Caine.)
3) Jamie Oliver.
My cousin married a proper Cambridge-educated Englishman, whose blood
boils every time someone calls a woman "love." He finds it common and
cheap. I find it fucking
fantastic. Whenever Jamie Oliver
calls a cafeteria worker "love," I sigh. My other man crush Anthony Bourdain wrote about Jamie Oliver
in one of his books, and apologized for originally classifying him as an
obnoxious British punk kid who lucked out on a restaurant, admitting that if
Bourdain had Oliver's money and clout, he didn't know if he would use it for
the good Oliver does. The man has
taken on the cause of improving eating habits of the poor, and he is
practically a saint for doing so.
4) Jesus Mary and Joseph, Shane Taylor in Band of
Brothers. His character not only
speaks an American accent but convincingly plays an American cajun without
veering into weird-hick territory.
5) Damian Lewis, my man Major Winters, plays an American
soldier turned sleeper cell agent in Homeland. G_d strike me down, but when that man whips out his prayer
rug on the show, I get a funny feeling (Like all nice Jewish girls do).
6) Ben Kingsely.
My actress friend once described to me the resume of an actor while
working at the surprisingly large and successful Utah Shakespeare Festival, the
living example of what can be accomplished when a very wealthy patron leaves
all of their money to the arts in southern Utah. She explained that every actor has one to two go-to accents
that they can do, usually British or Irish, if working in Shakespeare, meaning
that they can reasonably cover the regional dialects of Britain and Ireland
while still sounding like they know what they're doing. The fact that Sir Kingsley has played
everything from a Polish Jew, to Ghandi, to every range of British character,
to Iranian-American, to Russian, to Egyptian, to Australian and does so in
flawless accents is apparently near-impossible to accomplish. Even the best
will fail once in a while, and according to her, Kingsley has never missed the
mark once.
7) There is nothing more appealing than a British thug in a
great suit. Hand/neck tattoos
optional but highly appreciated.
8) Were you aware that Idris Elba of "The Wire"
(aka Stringer Bell) is a fellow Jamie Oliver east-ender? Now you know.
9) Nate Silver is to you like
Jon Stewart is to me, especially when he does his "old Jewish woman"
voice.
–Sofia
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