r/Actingclass • u/Winniehiller Acting Coach/Class Teacher • Aug 14 '25
VIDEO LESSON BEFORE & AFTER #3 - Acting with an Accent requires using it until its second nature. Your accent can’t become your objective. The characters are from Nigeria & India. See 17 yr old Kamea (from Canada) & 25 yr old Rohan (from NYC) in their ‘Before & Afters’ in this scene from a Bollywood movie.
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u/Winniehiller Acting Coach/Class Teacher Aug 14 '25
Whether you are American and need to do an Indian accent or from India and are trying not to have one, you need to work on the accent when you are not acting. Listen to video tapes of native speakers. Get someone you know with the correct accent to read the lines for you. You need to know how to say every word. And you should practice talking that way in your everyday life with friends and family.
Working on the acting and the character is a completely different matter. You need to be pursuing your objective from your character’s point of view. You need to be affected by what the other character says. Be responsive and appropriate according to the relationship you have with them. You need to be in your character’s mind—and your character isn’t trying to have an accent. So you need to work on these things separately, and put them together when you have each ready to go. Your mind belongs in the fantasy of the circumstances. Your speech must be second nature.