Let's Celebrate the Worst Irish Accents of All Time

As an Irishman, when I profess a love for terrible Irish accents in film and TV, I swear I’m being neither snarky nor disingenuous. Hand to God, few things bring me as much bemused joy as hearing a recognizable actor—whether they be distinguished Hollywood royalty or a newly-hatched WB actor/model—butcher my native brogue. I believe this puts me in a minority position among my people, who tend to greet the first notes of these Leprechaun lilts with, at best, a full-body cringe, and at worst, a spasm of murderous rage.

But for me, bad Irish accents are like cherry-flavored candy. They resemble the real thing just enough to be recognizable, but after you eat a couple of real cherries you start to wonder how on Earth the ersatz version has managed to corner the market. Wouldn’t it be better to make cherry-flavored confectionery taste like real cherries? By the same logic, wouldn’t it be make more sense to model your Irish accent on an actual Irish person—Brendan Gleeson or Gabriel Byrne, perhaps—rather than, say, Richard Gere as tortured IRA sniper Declan Joseph Mulqueen? If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, Those three people sound exactly the same, well, that’s ok. Don’t sweat it. For a long time, I thought Harrison Ford’s Russian accent in K-19: The Widowmaker was pretty decent, so nobody’s perfect.

To mark my fifth St. Patrick’s Day in these United States, I’ve decided to give out some long-overdue awards for my favorite Terrible Irish Accents.

Most Needlessly Awful Irish Accent in a Film

Sean Connery as Officer Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables (1987)

What I love about this incredibly half-assed attempt is just how unnecessary it is. Straight-talking Chicago cop Jimmy Malone, unlike Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness, never actually existed. So even if you’ve resolved to cast Sean Connery (who, whether playing a spy, a naval captain, or a CGI dragon, has only ever sounded like Sean Connery) why not just make his character Scottish? By virtue of having invented the lad, you can imbue him with whatever qualities you choose, so why not play to the actor’s strengths (i.e. being Sean Connery)? He’s really good at that. What he’s less good at, as anyone who saw the 1959 Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People (actual tagline: A touch O’Blarney, a heap O’Magic and a load O’Laughter) can attest, is convincingly pulling off an Irish accent.

Most Valiant Attempt to Convince the Teens That Irishness is Sexy

David Boreanaz as Angel/Angelus in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (1997-2004)

Normally I would argue that jobbing television actors in the pre-Golden Age of TV get a pass for shaky attempts at foreign accents. There was rarely the time or the budgetary freedom to send these journeypeople off to dialect coaches, even if the priority was verisimilitude rather than getting 22 episodes in the can as fast as humanly possible. Tortured, brooding heartthrob Angel, however—who goes from permanently-soused Galway lout to ruthless libertine vampire to re-ensouled hero—makes this list because his backstory gels with a moment in the ‘90s when dark and sexy representations of Irishness were all the rage. I’m talking about a Hibernian golden age: star-crossed teenagers played by toned 30-somethings giving each other Claddagh rings; Celtic symbols festooning every onscreen choker and pendant; the Cranberries’ “Linger” on your film’s soundtrack. As an ardent fan of both Buffy and its spinoff, I always found the flashback scenes—when evil Irish Angelus lets his evil Irish accent fly—particularly delightful.

Most Manic, Full-Bodied Car Crash Impersonation

Tom Cruise as Joseph Donnelly in Far and Away (1992)

The Mountaintop. The Gold Standard. The Chef’s Kiss of shit Irish accents belongs to young Tom Cruise in this wonderfully awful Ron Howard-helmed tale of two fiery 19th-century immigrants (then-newlyweds Cruise and Nicole Kidman) who flee the old country in search of a new life in America. To be fair, Kidman’s accent is almost as bad as Cruise’s—at times it might even be worse—but the squirrely energy that Tom brings to this early role puts him over the top. He has no idea what he wants to sound like—the accent is all over the place, Belfast one minute, Pirate Jerry Maguire the next—but how can you argue with his frankly terrifying exuberance? If Cruise had fallen off Oprah’s couch and into a vat of Shamrock Shake mix, this glorious creation is what would have emerged—grinning and twitching and chewing up the scenery like a frenzied Irish Wolfhound pup.

Most Endearingly Dreadful Irish Accent

Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly’s Great-Great-Grandfather Seamus McFly in Back to the Future III (1990)

Seamus McFly might be (and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here) the greatest character in cinematic history. He’s got a bushy red mustache and a fine head of red hair, and nothing but patience and hospitality for his hot-headed, fish out of water, time-travelling great-great-grandson. Seamus is essentially a Magical Irish Immigrant, appearing out of thin air in the California desert to dispense hats, buckshot-riddled rabbit dinners, and sage platitudes to his cocky, Reaganite descendant. Yes, his accent is beyond appalling, but who knows what the stress of an 1880’s Atlantic crossing does to a man’s vocal chords? Seamus and his young family are making a go of it in the Wild West and I for one think we should salute him for it.

Most Earnest Attempt to Not Egregiously Offend the People of Ireland

Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan in Michael Collins (1996)

& as Mary Reilly in Mary Reilly (1996)

I feel quite protective of Julia Roberts’s Irish accent. It’s not good, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not completely atrocious either. And at least she never lapses into full-blown caricature, which is more than I can say for the pooka-possessed specimens above. More importantly, it’s clear that Julia really wanted to nail it. Why else would she choose, at the very peak of her powers, to play not one but two Irish characters in the same year? As both Kitty Kiernan—fiancée to slain Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, and Mary Reilly—maid to famously moody Victorian doctor Henry Jekyll, Roberts gamely tries to inject a bit of soft musicality into her polished Hollywood diction, but it doesn’t really work. Still, she does pull off a pretty serviceable rendition of “She Moved Through the Fair.”