"The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes"
About this Quote
Emily Mortimer points to a kind of state-dependent artistry. An accent, for her, is not a party trick to be summoned on cue but a byproduct of fully inhabiting a character. When she says she can do it only while playing the part, she is describing how voice becomes fused with psychology, physicality, and intention; the vocal choices lock into place only when the character’s inner life is activated. The vowels, cadence, and breath pattern are tied to a specific backstory, social class, geography, and emotional tempo. Without those anchors, reproducing the sound feels hollow or slippery, like trying to recall a dream after waking. It is a reminder that acting is not mere imitation but a wholesale shift in perspective, body, and objective, and the accent is the audible trace of that deeper transformation.
There is also an ethic embedded in her remark. By refusing to treat accent as an isolated skill, she resists the impulse toward caricature and emphasizes empathy. To step into someone else’s shoes is to accept their rhythms and constraints, not just their phonetics. Many actors rely on rituals and triggers to reach that state: posture, pace of thought, jaw tension, even where the tongue rests. Dialect coaches often teach that voice sits in the body; change the body and the voice follows. Mortimer’s observation aligns with that practice and with what psychologists call context-dependent memory: a skill learned in a specific context becomes easiest to access in that same context.
Her point also illuminates the porous boundary between self and role. Once the production ends, the accent recedes because the character’s objectives and circumstances have vanished. What remains is not a catalogue of borrowed sounds but the discipline to rebuild them when the story demands it. That humility honors both the craft and the people whose voices are being embodied.
There is also an ethic embedded in her remark. By refusing to treat accent as an isolated skill, she resists the impulse toward caricature and emphasizes empathy. To step into someone else’s shoes is to accept their rhythms and constraints, not just their phonetics. Many actors rely on rituals and triggers to reach that state: posture, pace of thought, jaw tension, even where the tongue rests. Dialect coaches often teach that voice sits in the body; change the body and the voice follows. Mortimer’s observation aligns with that practice and with what psychologists call context-dependent memory: a skill learned in a specific context becomes easiest to access in that same context.
Her point also illuminates the porous boundary between self and role. Once the production ends, the accent recedes because the character’s objectives and circumstances have vanished. What remains is not a catalogue of borrowed sounds but the discipline to rebuild them when the story demands it. That humility honors both the craft and the people whose voices are being embodied.
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| Topic | Movie |
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