Ever since the folks behind the upcoming film
"Little Ashes" gave us a pair of
exclusive clips to unveil earlier this week,
the Web has been buzzing with
Twilighter analysis of
Robert Pattinson's Spanish accent.
But, as they'd be the first to admit, "Twilight" fans can be a bit biased when it comes to their beloved
Spunk Ransom. With that in mind, we decided to take the issue straight to the professionals.
"I think it's a credible Spanish accent," praised
Joel Goldes, a veteran dialect coach who has spent 18 years working with Nicolas Cage, Jim Broadbent, Jennifer Garner and other actors. Goldes said he was impressed by the London-born Pattinson. "I think if I didn't know his background, I wouldn't suspect anything."
"What I'm hearing is actually a mixture. I'm hearing a lot of his Americanisms that he learned," said accent coach
Claudette Roche, saying that Pattinson's gig as Salvador Dalí is all the more difficult since co-star
Javier Beltrán is from Barcelona. "Because he's working with Javier, who is Spanish, it's very contrasting. Javier has a very pure Spanish accent."
But despite the occasional encroachment of RPattz's American tendencies, acting coach Bruce Ducat (who has worked with teen idols like Alyson Michalka, Katie Cassidy and Amanda Bynes) said it shouldn't be enough to bother his core audience. "I think if I was one of the thousands of adolescent young women who are automatically his fans, I would buy it," he said, adding one caveat: "I think if he has to meet the scrutiny of people whose ears are tuned for accuracy, it may be 50/50."
"In
the clip with the three guys, when he says, 'I expect so,' the way that he says 'so' is right on the money," Goldes said. "It's not English or American-sounding. It's not two sounds or two vowel sounds; it's just one. The 'oh' sound, that's exactly right."
"There is one thing he did that really struck me, and it is something he does as an Englishman well," said Roche, who is also British and has trained actors such as Lolita Davidovich. "I say, for example, 'I am going "ta" the store.' Like Americans, we don't say 'to,' we say 'ta.' And in
one little clip, he says ['I need to go further'] without the 'ta.' People who learn English as a second language learn it properly, and a little word like 'to' is a hard thing for them not to say properly. So [someone like Salvador Dalí] would say, 'I am going "to" the store.' It's a hard thing for them to break.
"He obviously did a good job in 'Twilight,' because no one ever said anything about his American accent," Roche continued. "And he's adorable, so it doesn't matter — he could be mute, and he would still be fabulous."
Tickets are now on sale through the
"Little Ashes" Web site, so Twilighters will soon enough have their chance to check out Rob's accent in all its unedited glory. And according to Goldes, the clips show a young actor whose mastery of the international tongue could serve him well in the years to come.
"Certainly it sounds like he learned exactly what to do, and he's doing it well," the dialect coach said. "These are hard accents to get. It seems to me that he should be able to do just about whatever he wants to do in the future, in terms of accents."
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