"Even in The Quiet Man, they never had him (John Wayne)try to adopt an Irish accent."

But he wasn't an Irish character! He played an American.

I think that someone else said only folk on the east side of the Atlantic will cringe at bad British accents and that is probably correct. There are quite a few British actors playing Americans in US TV shows at the moment and possibly some of them have iffy accents. We Brits wouldn't necessarily know.

I have to laugh at my wife though. She always gets het up that aliens on things like Star Trek etc always have American accents. "Aliens wouldn't have American accents" she will say. When asked what kind of accents they should have she says they would sound more like her - because she hasn't got an accent. It may be hard to pinpoint a regional accent on her but anyone north of the border knows straight away that she is English - yet she still insists she hasn't got an accent :-)