Or Picard could have been a very adept learner of English. His Anglophilia may have been part of his brother's annoyance with him.
She was supposed to be English? It never occurred to be since the character in the books is an American.
If I recall correctly, the dialogue in the film sort of gets around this by stating that Connery's character is a Lithuanian. Perhaps Lithuanians sound Scottish to Russians, and Russians sound English to Lithuanians?
Jean-Claude Van Damme in anything where he's not Belgian. They even lampshade it in Timecop when he stops a purse-snatcher and then tells his wife 'he read my mind' and she replies to the effect 'with your accent, he'd have to'.
Anyone who attempts an Australian accent. No one (including otherwise supremely talented mimics such as Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman) seems even remotely capable of getting it right, and the attempts are often atrocious (Lost features several examples, particularly the woman who played Clare's mother).
It's been ages since I read the book, but I recall Jack's wife in HFRO was English. I don't have the book to verify that, though. Gates starts off with some kind of bad RP line about the kids, then the next is straight up standard American about being late. Brit or American in the film, it was a bad delivery.
The only time I can recall Connery even trying to do an accent was when he pretended to be Dutch in Diamonds are Forever...on that basis it's probably a good thing he didn't try more often. As for Rickman, I think the point was supposed to be that although he's German he's a modern urbane, well travellened and sophistcated terrorist about town, hence the jokes about a classical eduction and Saville row suits. Irons did at least give Simon Gruber an accent!
You know I always assumed McClane was being sarcastic with that line and that it wasn't that Rickman's American accent was rubbish but Gruber's. No idea how good or bad his German accent was as, because of where I live, I pretty much grew up around mixed German and British accents. It can all get a bit subjective though. I recall on one of the B5 commentaries JMS notes that people complained at how fake President Luchenko's Eastern European accent sounded...which was ironic considering Beata Pozniak is Polish and she was using her normal voice.
It won't sound like an English one, considering no other ethnic accents seemed to change in the same course of time.
Why? The Australian and the New Zealand accents were created in less then half that time. Besides doesn't Data at some point says that French is an obscure language, I took that this meant that English had for the main part had replaced French in France.
In that case, her English accent was darn good! I don;'t know WHAT she was trying to do with that American accent, then.
That's hardly an observation unique to Ferguson. People were saying that as far back as when the movie first came out in 1986.
He actually tried somewhat to have an English accent in Dr. No. He didn't do a very good job and his effort at having one declined the more he played James Bond.
^ Pretending to be Dutch in Diamonds Are Forever was played for comedy, anyway. You're thinking of the, "Who is your floor?" bit, right? The bad accent just fit in with the strange humorous vibe that permeated the whole film.