There were several big pre-Oscar events in LA last night, and I really hope the low-turnout at these events is indicative of the turnout for the Oscars. The two biggest events were The Film is GREAT reception (which is for British films and British actors nominated this year) and the annual Women In Film pre-Oscar cocktail party. Alicia Vikander wore the same Erdem dress to the WIF event and The Film is GREAT reception. I was set to side-eye Alicia’s presence at a British-film gathering, but then I remembered that The Danish Girl is a British-financed film with a British director and British costars. So… okay. It’s worth noting that her hokey “posh British” accent is really, really distracting in The Danish Girl.
Here’s Idris Elba at the Film is GREAT reception, then he went out partying in Hollywood. Idris will be attending the Spirit Awards later today, and…? He’s not on the Oscar presenter list, but maybe he’ll come out for some of the Oscar parties. If he does come out for the parties, he should rethink the hat.
Here’s Jennifer Jason Leigh at the Women in Film event. I feel a little bit sad about JJL – in another year, with a different campaign, this might have been her moment to win. I don’t like her ensemble here, it looks cheap.
Maria Bello at the WIF event – this ensemble is absolutely tragic.
Michelle Monaghan in Erdem at the WIF event… the “sheer dickie” part of this needs to GO.
And finally, here’s Cate Blanchett at her own separate event for SK-II #ChangeDestiny Forum. She’s the face of SK-II (a skincare company), so I assume this was just a pre-Oscar event the company set up to promote their product AND Cate. The Antonio Berardi dress is very sexy – I love the little cap sleeve, and the design reminds me a lot of Roland Mouret.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.
Looks like Alicia had previously worn shoes that didn’t fit her. Dress and styling are meh, but so are everyone else’s.
Love the idea of Cate’s dress, but the cap sleeves look super uncomfortable to me. And the middle of the neckline looks off centre which is irking me somewhat..
i like michelle monaghan’s dress a lot, although the fit is a bit off. it looked better on the model.
everyone else’s outfit is meh, a;though cate blanchett uupper part of the dress is lovely, but i don’t love the length.
I love Cate’s dress, it’s adorable and chic. I’m with Kaiser on Alicia Vikander – not my cup of tea and she’s looking very smug here. I feel bad for Jennifer Jason Lee too – some “brutally honest” AA voters don’t even hide the fact that they did not see her movie, so they vote for Vikander.
Michelle Monaghan dress would be nice without the sheer panel and
Idris stole my hat, LOL 🙂
JJL didn’t campaign, really. It seemed to be a conscious choice on her part.
Also, Hateful 8 should have come out much earlier. There are so many movies on the awards circuit fighting to be seen in mid-late December (not to mention Star Wars this year) that good movies can get lost in the shuffle.
I haven’t seen “The Danish Girl” and don’t plan to – it seems like an Oscarbait-by-numbers bore.
Agree about her fake ‘British’ accent though. Extremely annoying. She’s Swedish, not a posh English girl. Why not speak with her natural accent? And has anyone else noticed that her boyfriend has recently adopted an odd ‘mid-Atlantic’ drawl of late? I heard it first on the Graham Norton Show and again when he was interviewed for the BAFTAs. Very strange.
As for the fashion, Alicia’s dress is nice, but as always she comes across as a bit twee. Cate is the only one who really looks good.
Funny enough because I think her husky voice in one of the best thing about her. And I never seen anyone on the site complain about Alexander Skarsgard American accent. I live abroad a year and it’s common thing to adopt the accent where you live.
As for the dress I’m not a fan but I like the makeup.
I disagree that it’s common to simply ‘pick up’ a foreign accent. I lived abroad for years and never modified my accent. I also know any number of people who have lived in the UK for decades and still maintain their natural accent. Even when a person speaks a foreign language perfectly, the accent is usually the one thing that gives them away. Plus, Alicia lives all over the place, so it’s not like she’s been immersed in a posh English environment. It’s obvious that she has made a conscious effort to affect that accent.
And while I can’t speak for other posters, I find Skarsgard’s fake accent equally annoying.
that’s because it’s usually a conscious choice to adopt an accent, but there’s nothing wrong in this choice. some people do it to be more intelligible, or to avoid questions (the whole ‘where are you from?’ gets tiring quickly for introverts, trust me) and blend in. it’s really not as big a deal as her haters want to make it look like.
I think if you live in the US and work a lot in US films it’s probably easier to keep that accent ( Skarsgaard) just like those 2 from Without a Trace both Aussies but always speak in an American accent and when I saw him in an Aussie film his accent was weird. I have lived in London almost 17 years and don’t sound English. I too haven’t seen Danish Girl and won’t his mannerisms seem
Off to me.
Ethelreda – your anecdotal experience is not universal, though. Many many people do pick up accents when living abroad. It’s very common. I work with actors (mostly not famous) and they always pick up accents around them very quickly, entirely subconsciously.
It IS common to pick up accents when living around different accents — I have done so without even knowing it or trying to do it. I come back home or meet someone and they say I have an accent.
I come back home and lose it. I have also noticed it on others who tend to travel a lot be it for leisure or pleasure. Not everyone has an agenda to ” get an accent”.
I picked up one I was horrified to learn I even had and would never even want to have so yes, it happens. And we don’t always want it to or even realize it!
First of all, children in Sweden are tought english in school from the age of six. Therefor a lot of us speak english with a english accent with a swedish touch, some less some more.
Secondly, we have loads of american and english TV-shows and they are all subtitled and not dubbed, so we grow up hearing english and americans every day and we pick up from it.
Thirdly, she has lived in London for quite a few years and a lot of people pick up accents. I know I do. If I have to talk english with an Italian I speak with an italian accent which I picked up living in Italy as a teenager. It’s not something I set out to do, it just comes. My normal accent is american since my dad is american.
“Agree about her fake ‘British’ accent though.”
how can you agree if you didn’t see the film?
she’s not the only actress doing that. gillian anderson grew up mostly in the US and only for a bit in the UK, and when she’s over here she has a super rp english accent. nikolai coster waldau (jaime lannister in got), who’s danish, always keeps an english accent in england, and a more americanised one if he’s doing interviews in the US. eva green, she’s french, has a super RP accent all the time. alexander skasgaard, swedish, speaks with an american accent, birgitte sorensen, danish, (got and vynil actress) has an english accent when doing interviews for got and an american accent in interviews for vynil. i could go on, but of course, let’s be salty about alicia all the time lmao. foreign actors do this a lot, and as an immigrant who had to learn english at 11, i can assure you that picking up the accent people have where you live, helps blend in better and you are easier to understand. it’s very common for anyone who moves to a foreign country.
“how can you agree if you didn’t see the film? ”
Because I’m referring to her affected accent in interviews.
“nikolai coster waldau (jaime lannister in got), who’s danish, always keeps an english accent in england, and a more americanised one if he’s doing interviews in the US.”
Any time I’ve heard him being interviewed, he speaks with his natural Danish accent, though he does have a very good ”English” accent in GoT. And Eva Green was educated in English speaking instittuions.
“it’s very common for anyone who moves to a foreign country. ”
Like I said above, I disagree. It isn’t very common. Certainly not when you move to a country as an adult, and don’t even spend that much time there. Moving to a country as a child is completely different from spending some time in a country as an adult who was already fluent in the language. Besides, her UK base is in London, where hardly anyone speaks with that sort of accent. In fact, hardly anyone speaks like that, full stop.
I agree that if you move to a foreign country BEFORE puberty, it’s very easy to pick up the local accent but when you move as an adult, it’s much, much harder. It takes a very conscious effort to speak with a specific accent. It does not come naturally, believe me – I moved abroad as an adult and could never completely get rid of my accent though I managed to develop a non-descript accent that didn’t immediately reveal my country of origin. I also noticed that Alicia speaks with a more American accent when on American talk shows. My sister-in-law, born in the U.S., moved to England years ago and she has a slight English intonation but she still sounds American. It would be weird and phoney if she adopted a “posh” British accent now.
youtube(.)com(/)watch?v=juq31pNbks0 ncw’s interview for sky atlantic in england, with a RP english accent. but there are plenty, you just need to google it.
re eva green: you’re misinformed, she was not educated in an english institution, she did some studying in england and that’s about it. at the start of her career she had a super french accent when speaking in english, watch this:
youtube(.)com(/)watch?v=vRsWz4oNvf8
also you ignored all the other examples i made. it might not be common among the people you know, but it’s common with people who travel a lot and immigrants. also i’m assuming you’re a londoner, since you’re saying you know how people speak in london right? well, i live in london, and i can assure you there are all sorts of accents, some more educated, some less.
I didn’t say Eva was educated in English institutions, I said she was educated in English speaking institutions. Not the same thing.
“also you ignored all the other examples i made.”
Well, if other people are affecting accents, I find it annoying on them too. But this discussion is about Alicia, and I was responding to a comment made about Alicia.
And no, I don’t live in London. But having travelled widely, lived abroad for years and worked as an English teacher, I disagree strongly with you that it’s ‘very common’ for adults to simply ‘pick up’ an accent, particularly when they don’t regularly live among people who speak with that accent. Alicia made a conscious effort to affect that accent. Her choice obviously, but it’s also my choice to find it annoying – this being a gossip site and all that.
Do you mean in the film or generally? If generally, doesn’t it just depend on whether they learned American English or British English? I don’t know about the Swedish education system but I’m sure they teach both in Denmark, for example, and I’m also guessing that British English is more likely to be the one taught in schools. If you learn British English, you will be taught in RP, which is a posh accent.
I know she is not liked on here, but this does seem a silly criticism.
@Sixer, it has more to do with spelling and vocabulary, rather than the accent. At least in my country. I guess it also depends on the media. Here we don’t dub anything, everything is subtitled, and the majority of the foreign shows are American ( minus the telenovelas) so that’s the accent you hear the most.
Edit- I see now that’s specific to my country. Weird.
I guess it does depend on media. Taught with an English accent, but most TV and film watched in an American accent?
I just checked with Mr Sixer, who lived in Denmark for a couple of years after he left the army, and he says at that time most Danes were taught British English but once fluent, adopted whichever accent they personally preferred. Perhaps ArtHistorian might happen along and confirm if it’s still like that!
Either way, British English is taught abroad in Received Pronunciation, which is another term for POSH! My main point is that it is not at all weird to hear a Scandinavian talking in RP. I watch a great deal of Scandinavian TV and English is often spoken as a kind of lingua franca between people from different countries in shows from all the Nordic nations. And the accent almost always used is RP aka POSH! Insofar as I can see, it’s not affected or fake: it’s the norm.
No, just spelled the British way, using British words, but even the teachers speak with an American accent. I’ve never heard someone from here use a rp accent.
Disagree. Having travelled in Scandinavia and worked with many people from that region, it certainly is not the ‘norm’ for them to speak like public school types. Danish people speak with Danish accents, Swedish people speak with Swedish accents, and so on. If they speak with posh English accents, they are making a conscious effort to do so, so it is definitely an affectation.
The goal for any foreign language learner is to not have an accent at all. But for most people it is not possible / not worth the effort, this is why they speak with an accent.
One has to have a very good ear, and then work with an accent reduction teacher / use accent reduction tapes. Of course she chose to get rid of her Swedish accent and adopt British accent , otherwise she wouldn’t be able to get work in British movies.
Regarding the accent of the teachers – when I was growing up British accent was more prestigious (not to mention the US being considered a mortal enemy ) , all teachers spoke with British accent. US accent was considered more pedestrian. Even Americans themselves love British accent, so if choosing which one to learn I would advise going with British.
@Farhi: Exactly. She likely worked very hard to perfect her British accent, and it’s a bit petty to expect her to adopt a different accent only to sound more palatable to an American audience. Is it really that important?
My English teachers also spoke and preferred British, though I suspect it was more down to level of difficulty and a sort of academic elitism, considering we are all practically immersed in the American culture and language without even leaving the country.
@Sixer, I’ve encountered RP when speaking English in Italy and Spain and Greece. But exchange students from Germany and Sweden who’ve stayed at my aunt’s house spoke General American. I do think people learn the pronunciation/accent in which they are trained.
Lilacflowers
They teach RP in German schools and (sometimes) you get marked down for GA pronounciation or writing.
Apropo accents – I’ve noticed that a lot of European actors from non-English speaking countries pronounce things the British way. Here, in schools we learn British English, so we spell things the British way, but most of the English you’re surrounded by on a daily basis is American, so we pronounce things the American way ( things like dance and can’t etc.) . Even the teachers don’t have a British accent . Do people in Scandinavia usually speak the British way? As a Slavic person, the way you say the letter “r” is incredibly hard. Maybe it’s easier the British way.
Granted, I’ve never been to an English speaking country, so maybe that influenced their accent.
Also, I don’t like her voice. It’s nasal, not husky. But the criticism she gets here is a bit much.
i find her voice nasal as well tbh, but that’s nothing to do with her accent.
I agree with Ell, I’m french and in school we learned to speak with an English accent. And when I spend a year abroad in Montréal and in Belgium both time without even trying I came back with both accents.
@sixer you right it’s kind of silly criticism but everything is fine to criticize with Vikander.
I have heard they learn British English in Sweden, in Norway it’s optional (British or American), not sure about Denmark. Anyway, ridiculous thing to criticize her for. Many Scandinavians find the British accent very difficult to learn compared to the American one, and she’s supposed to toss it aside to fit in as an American now? Or make sure to speak with a Swedish accent so nobody can accuse her of faking it? Which is it? I can’t speak with a perfect accent, but if I could, I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t.
I speak English with a British accent. I was fluent since I was child, but the first time I really spoke English in daily life (not school lessons) was when I was in my 20’s and surrounded by Brits and people taught English by Brits. It was partly on purpose (easier to be understood) but it also just kind of happened. I went from saying the odd word here or there with a British accent (so as to avoid repeating myself), to speaking with an obvious British accent all the time. It’s just something that happens to a lot of people.
Of all the expats I know, the only ones whose accent’s haven’t changed considerably are those who mostly speak to their similarly accented family and friends daily.
Re: Idris’ hat. The first photo looks a little hokey. Then in the next you see his form. Hat, no hat, who the hell cares? The man is divine.
Alicia’s dress is fugly.
Cate is rocking her dress.
Alicia Vikander is the best thing that happened to the film industry in a long time.
I hope she’ll go a long way, she seems like a humble person that knows where she comes from and not willing to give up her identity to become a famous actress in Hollywood.
Cate Blanchett looks flawless but the shoes are all wrong.
I totally agree! We needed a new, nice face. I love her.
I agree. She is different and she seems to be nice and a hardworker. I like her so far.
This is the same woman who wants to be more famous and can’t wait for three movies to be in the Oscars. Well, she made that prediction.
I like her too. She looks so vulnerable but then uses this to her advantage in her roles and she stands out aesthetically. No one else in HW resembles her.
Why do Vikander’s stylists hate her so much? I can’t believe how ugly all her dresses are
Hmm yeah it’s not like she’s on the list of every fashion magazine for best dresses
I like most of her dresses and enjoy her style. That said, this outfit would be much improved with a different shoe, the heavy grey suede is ugly. A red, green or yellow to pick up the colours in the dress would’ve been better.
I actually don’t hate Vikander’s dress. I would never wear it, because physically I’m about as opposite as can be (redhead, 5’10”, athletic build with broad shoulders), but as tiny and delicate as she is I think she looks really lovely in it–like a doll.
In Europe people are taught British English. Not only in school but also while attending university. American English is not my cup of tea either. I love her English and I do agree with a lot of people on here when stating that you try to adapt. Very normal. You don’t want people pointing at you and saying: well you are not from England, huh? I never wanted that so I tried to adapt. But hey, let’s us point our finger at Alicia. Bad Bad Alicia. How dare she. The hate towards this woman is quite amusing.
If she win the oscar it’s gonna be hilarious.
everyone in the world is taught British english except americans..even in canada. Doing the opposite would be like teaching quebec french in other places throughout the world.
I could care less about the girl, but I despise anyone who “adopts” a new accent for whatever reason. I hate those fake NY, Boston, English, French, Italian, and especially Southern accents so badly I just want to scream when I hear them.
I swear if I had been around Madonna when she was HRH, I would still be serving time right now. B****! YOU’RE FROM MICHIGAN!
I was taught British English as well, and now I live in Texas. My accent is a strange mix as a result. Some people do think I am being uppity when I sound more British. Others cant figure out where my accent is from because it is a mix of American, British and Eastern European. Most place me as a Swede , incidentally..
Anyway. anyone learning English in Europe would be taught British English by default. But also I am assuming Alicia worked with a teacher on her accent reduction and I am guessing she was given advice to adopt that particular British accent if she was planning to work in Britain mostly.
Am I the only one who think AV’s dress looks like a CHRISTMAS TREE? I know those are supposed to be flowers, etc…It’s a F_____ Christmas tree!
Idris looks good as usual.
Thank You for the palette cleansing pic of Cate.
I think it does too ( looks like Christmas tree that is) but I love it for this exact reason, it brings happy memories . I would buy it if I could afford it.
Cate for the win.
+1 ixne on everyone else.
Isn’t Erdem what Cumberbatch’s wife wears and everyone hates? I dislike this dress on her, but her style has mostly been blah to me. Her performance in Danish Girl was subpar too.