Andrew Jack interview

We are sorry to report that Andrew Jack sadly passed away on 31st March 2020 after contracting Coronavirus. Our deepest sympathies to his family.

Captain America, Batman, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood and James Bond – Andrew Jack has helped them all.

As a dialect coach, Andrew’s career has spanned over 80 productions across the world. He’s worked with every major star you could think of to hone, refine and adapt vocal performances on the some of the World’s biggest Blockbusters. One of his biggest challenges came when Peter Jackson picked him for all three of the Lord of the Rings Films.

We ask him about some of the biggest projects of his career and his favourite moments in film.....

Can you tell us what you are working on at present and what’s in store for the future?

At the moment I'm working on "Snow White and the Huntsman" at Pinewood. As is always the case I can't talk about what I'm doing on the film until its release. Future projects are often a mystery, I usually know what my next project is when I'm halfway the current work.

Going back to the beginning of your career, how did you become a Dialect coach and what was your breakthrough moment?

As an actor I spent some of my time performing on radio, but more as a 'loop group' artist, re-voicing bit part actors in feature films, for this I had to disguise my voice both in quality and accent. I travelled around quite a bit in the 1970s and studied and perfected the many accents I heard.  Then after several years teaching voice and dialect at LAMDA, actors and directors began to ask me for my help. My breakthrough, if you could call it that, was when I was asked to coach on "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in 1987. 

How do you prepare and train with actors, both in pre production and on a daily basis? Do you get called in to help the casting process? Can you give us an example from one of your more recent projects?

As you might expect, each actor is different and my approach can differ from one actor to the next. Some actors prefer to learn accents phonetically, using symbols, others prefer to learn just by ear or it might be a combination of the two. I have to be very conscious of how to approach and adjust the work with each performer, when there are several actors on a set it can get quite busy!

I'm only occasionally involved with the casting process, but when I am it's to assess the accent capabilities of an actor or maybe to help them with a 'screen test' for a part in a film.

What do you to research the dialects you teach? What tools or equipment do you have on set – apart from your voice, what’s the most essential part of your work?

As a consequence of more than 50 years experience using my voice professionally, I find that most of the basic accents and dialects I teach are lodged somewhere in my brain but I find that each time I'm called upon to coach any of them I  learn more and more about specific regions and periods. Additional  research is done either from a personal library of tapes and reference material, by visiting the locale or tapping the resources of the Internet. I find that I can't teach anyone to do an accent that I can't do myself, accents are organic and involve everything from gesture, body movement and breathing to emotion and feelings.

The tools and equipment I use on set comprise my script, my iPhone and my personal professional 'bud' earphones. Off set I have practice material, a laptop and a DAT recorder.

I would say that the most essential part of my work is how to approach actors on a movie set, my own experience as an actor has helped me a lot, knowing when to give a note and when to keep away, and it's also very important to be sympathetic to the needs of other members of the crew.

You recently worked again with Robert Downey Jr in the Sherlock Holmes films –  as well as working with him for his flawless accent in Chaplin. Is it harder for US actors to perform English accents than vice versa?

In my experience, I would say that it's more difficult for US actors to take on British accents than the reverse. General American in particular is so available to British actors through films and television.

Anne Hathaway recently revealed that she watched Emmerdale to prepare for ‘One Day’ and it’s said Russell Crowe based his Robin Hood on Michael Parkinson – Do you often pick out individuals to base accents on? If so, who have you used and is there anyone you would like to use in future?

I suppose I might, but I find that actors can bring so much of themselves to a character that examples of individuals can almost be restricting and misleading, in my experience actors can sometimes slavishly copy an individual to the detriment of their own creativity.  If one were to listen to six Cornishmen from the same village, they would all use similar speech sounds but sound different from each other in character and it's those  differences that I feel are so important.

You worked with Viggo Mortensen on Eastern Promises, he reportedly spent a month travelling around Russia and Ukraine to understand his Vor y Kavone, gangster character. Were you tempted to go with him and have you experienced such method approaches?

Viggo and I had already established the basis of his Russian accent before he went to Russia. I think some actors would envy Viggo's preparation for a part, it is always impeccable and always valid. I've worked with him on "LotR", "Eastern Promises" and "Good" and on each production his work has been so informative that I understand more of the character and  in turn this benefits my coaching.

From years of inhabiting different characters and a youth spent travelling the world, Christian Bale has a notoriously wandering accent. For Batman Begins, how did you create the Gotham City accent and did the rest of the cast need to fall in line with that version?

I based the Gotham City accent on a point east of Chicago, with melting pot influences similar to New York, many of the supporting actors were British or Irish which also helped the mix. Christian's Bruce Wayne accent was his own but he and I developed the voice of Batman to differentiate the two characters. I was only involved with "Batman Begins" the first of the series. 

You worked with Pierce Brosnan as Bond – what was that experience like and how did it feel given a fresh voice to such well known and cherished ‘Bond’ lines?

Working with Pierce was a considerable delight. I'd first worked with him in 1984 on "Nancy Astor" a BBC mini series, to my mind he has barely changed as an individual from that first meeting until now. He was always friendly and enjoyable to work with on set. I think he took on Bond brilliantly with his own personal charm and panache. For me he will always be the best James Bond ~ but I'm biased!

Can you explain the origin or RP and how it’s generally used in Period Pieces? Particularly in Troy – can you tell us how you distinguished Brad Pitt’s Greek RP style from Eric Bana’s Trojan RP?

Received Pronunciation or RP, probably originated in the 1920s with Daniel Jones who was the author of the Everyman's (now Cambridge) English Pronouncing Dictionary. RP is best described as the English pronunciation that we as listeners understand best, no matter who we are. An audience in a working man's club in Yorkshire would probably comprehend the fundamentals of socialism delivered in RP better than it would if delivered in a Yorkshire accent.

In "Troy" we differentiated the accents of the Greeks and the Trojans by creating an RP hybrid, where we removed the 'R' consonant and used the native 'OH' vowel sounds of the actors cast as Greeks,  and we asked the actors playing Trojans to simply use good RP.  See my website for an accent rationale

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When did you find out you had got the Lord of the Rings job & what was your biggest challenge? Fictional languages? The Scale of the cast and operation? How long where you in NZ for?

I think I must have found out about "LotR" a few months before the preparation began in New Zealand. Nothing really stands out as being more of a challenge than anything else, I suppose it was all a challenge, but none if it was insurmountable. The rules and pronunciation of Elvish were provided by Tolkein in the appendices of the books. The scale of the production was mammoth, and we certainly appreciated the fact by the time we were half way through filming. At the beginning of shooting we had a 'main unit' and a 'second unit' with only 'main unit' shooting dialogue, but by the time we were half way through filming  we were having to monitor what was being shot on six units of various sizes, all of them shooting dialogue, I suppose if we had a challenge, that might have been it!  The shooting of the three movies took sixteen months.

Again with Lord of the Rings, where did you base the west country accent from and how do you get two American actors and two Scottish actors to sound as if they hail from the same village?

The accent of the hobbits was based on Gloucestershire. We felt that it was the closest we could get to a west country sound without it being too yokel, it is the least urban and as a consequence it gave a sense of a period much older than our own. See my website for an accent rationale.  We had six weeks of preparation before we started filming and all the actors spent hours of practice almost every day to perfect their various accents.

What has been your proudest achievement and who has been your favourite pupil?

Without a doubt, my proudest achievement has been Richard Attenborough's  "Chaplin" with Robert Downey Jr. My favourite pupil is also RDJ for "Chaplin", for "Restoration" and the two "Sherlock Holmes" movies that we've made together and also for the person and friend that he is!

Your wife, Paula Jack, is also a dialect coach – How did you meet, what’s it like when you get to work on the same project and how do you approach the job working in tandem?

We met through an acquaintance in completely non movie circumstances. It's a very satisfying situation, working with someone who  one can trust completely. From time to time we are able to work together and sometimes we do each other's post production. We often refer to each other for expert opinion and advice. I think we're a great and unique team.

If you could change one thing about the film industry, what would you do?

I would want the industry to ensure that provision is made for a dialect/dialogue coach in the budget of every movie, there are so many projects and actors that are denied the often undervalued contribution we can make, it isn't good enough to keep the budget down by hiring someone for a pittance who happens to live in the area, or who professes to speak with the accent. Amateurs have no concept of the detail, history and how to go about helping an actor to aquire an accent, those of us who coach professionally have taken years to perfect what we do.

What do you do when you are not working?

Not in any particular order:  I love being in the countryside and fresh air. I love spending time with my wife. I like good food and good music. I live on a Dutch trawler which I care for and I enjoy a bit of gardening, and…… as my father did before me, I love Clarnico peppermint creams.

Which film or film maker do you wish you work with (who you haven’t already)?

I would have liked to have worked with David Lean, although I did prep two actors for his film of "A Passage to India", I never met him.

Members of the site can see Andrew Jack's profile page here and visit his personal website here.