English actors doing foreign accents- any good?

[witchcurlgirl]

Not a movie accent, but of course Madonna's pitiful
attempt at sounding British is a contender.

which actually makes it even more pitiful.....i hate affectations.....

[Grimmlok]

see. i have to wonder if she didn't actually naturally absorb some inflections.. i went to Atlanta for 2 weeks and came back with a slight drawl, but then again i can pick up and imitate accents pretty quick

[Tati]

^ Oh man, me too. I know I started to sound Scottish after just two weeks (locals were assuming I was from the Orkneys or something), and I actually started to pick up my friend's drawl just from vacationing in Vegas with her, lol.

[Novice]

Even James Marsters only got there after a while. His accent in the first episode he appeared (School Hard, I believe) was so over the top. I heard him in a convention tell the story of how he only had a few days to prepare, and even he cringed at the memory (he also admitted that Tony Head helped him a lot with sounding more natural as a Brit).

I'm sorry, I love Buffy and Spike but have to completely disagree with you (to my ears) about Spike's accent. Maybe its because at that time I was working as a "listener", but to me it was all wrong, the emphasis on words, the self-conciousness of it.... one of my friends told me he was supposed to be cockney at one point & she had to kick me to stop me laughing after half an hour!
(and that was to the end of one of the series.... after Angel had left & everything!)

Gwynneth Paltrow and Renee Zellweger I recall both got high marks for their English accents. I can't think of any American male actors with passable British accents offhand.

Ah! Don Cheedle in one of the Oceans.... he was incredibly good but there was just something slightly off with it... and it was his word useage with the accent (like cockney slang with a standard english accent), it took me a while to work out what was wrong, but other than that the accent was very good.

Can I throw something else in here? I was recently listening to an American book set in England, and to have english charactures using works like "lawyers" instead of solicitors and taking something to the nearest police HQ in London... well, that's Scotland Yard, there is only 1 HQ... I never noticed it when I read the book but to hear it... (but maybe thats to do wih my dyslexia - I think I make half of it up myself when I read normally!).