10 Actors Whose Movie Character Requests Got Rejected
3. Jude Law Wanted To Act With An English Accent - Black Sea
Kevin Macdonald's 2014 thriller Black Sea stars Jude Law as Robinson, an underwater salvage expert who embarks on a mission to track down a sunken submarine said to be loaded with gold.
When Law signed on for the part there wasn't any specificity to the character's accent, and Law quite understandably assumed he'd speak with a variation on his usual English twang.
But Scottish filmmaker Macdonald "persuaded" Law to adopt a Scottish accent - Aberdonian, to be precise - while playing Robinson. According to Law himself, Macdonald's rationale was:
"[Macdonald] said there was something about the Aberdeen accent which was right for the character, it feels calm and without hurry and unflappable and even."
Ultimately despite praise for the film and Law's performance, his accent received more mixed reviews, especially from Scottish people. Macdonald, for his own part, downplayed the complaints:
"Everybody knows it's not his accent so you are fighting that, and you are thrown for a few minutes... But then you accept it and you see what that does to the character."
Either way, one suspects Law would've preferred to save himself a headache and just play the part with a more familiar English dialect.