Tony Earnshaw: Hathaway’s likely new role is a Gallic shrug to criticism of her accent

FORGIVE the pun, but with Anne Hathaway the accent is on performance. Performing with a credible accent, on the other hand, is sometimes a little harder. Cue a cacophony of comments on Hathaway’s poorly-received attempt at a Yorkshire accent playing chippy northerner Emma in One Day.

But let’s move on. Some of our greatest actors have had a hard time nailing a convincing accent, be it Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park – he starts off Scottish and gradually becomes an Oxford Don – or horror legend Peter Cushing in The Beast Must Die, playing a Norwegian scientist with an accent straight out of Swansea. Or Bombay. Dick Van Dyke slaughtered his Cockney chimney sweep in Mary Poppins and Juliette Binoche squawked “Eescleef! Eescleef!” in the 1992 version of Wuthering Heights, in which she was a very Gallic Cathy Earnshaw. They’re all at it.

Yet it appears not to matter. Most Americans wouldn’t know Heckmondwike from Hammersmith. They all think we’ve met the Queen, that we wear tweeds and plus-fours, shoot grouse on the 12th of every month and call each other “darling” as a matter of course.

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It’s a nonsense, but that’s the movies. Errol Flynn played Robin Hood with a Transatlantic twang and no-one cared. Russell Crowe tried out a bizarre northern dialect for his attempt and everyone laughed. The trick is to play it as one sounds, American (or Antipodean) or not. Now Hathaway is said to be the front-runner to star as Fantine in Tom (The King’s Speech) Hooper’s blockbuster version of Les Miserables. The tipping point, allegedly, was her song-and-dance performance at this year’s Oscars ceremony, partnering with a strangely immobile James Franco.

But it’s the voice everyone is raving about. Gwyneth Paltrow would be my choice – She sings! She acts! – but she’s over the hill now at 38. Hathaway is but a mere slip of a lass at 28. And that’s how it happens in the movies. There’s no doubt that Hathaway has the chops as a dramatic actress – movies like Brokeback Mountain, Havoc and The Devil Wears Prada are testament to that – but there should be an acceptance of the right casting.

Tragic, doomed Fantine is French. There are lots of French actresses out there who can play the role. The trouble is that the general US audience doesn’t do foreign films with subtitles. Which means that apart from French stars who have made English-speaking flicks, like Audrey Tautou and Marion Cotillard, there ain’t many that Stateside viewers will accept.

Step forward Miss Hathaway. Born in Brooklyn in 1982, she’s American to the core, and not too old. She’s pretty. She can sing. And right now she’s bankable. So that’s okay. Let’s hope she doesn’t try to add a French accent to her repertoire...

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