I agree with most of what you say, IB, but you did miss something.

"American's can't do English either; just listen to Dick Van Dyke, or more recently the actors who play the members of Seattle's English community on Frasier."

Just because Dick Van Dyke can't do an English accent for sour owl jowls doesn't mean that lots of other Americans can't. And as far as Frasier is concerned, if you are under the impression that Daphne had a phony English accent, then let me point out that the role of Daphne was played by Jane Leeves who is English. She came from Essex, to be exact.

Daphne was supposed to have been from Manchester. On an episode or two, Daphne's mother did appear. She was played by British actress Millicent Martin, who was from Manchester. There were occasional appearances by Daphne's bar fly father, played by Brian Cox, a British actor born in Scotland, and her three brothers, played by Anthony LaPaglia from Australia, Richard E. Grant from Swaziland, and Robbie Coltrane from Scotland. Not an American actor in the whole family.

There may have been a few American actors in the "English pub in the U. S." episode, the place where Daphne liked to hang out in her off hours (the one in which Frasier butted in and was doing his damnedest to fit in and "act English," much to Daphne's irritation, and generally made an ass of himself), but as I recall, other than Jane Leeves and Kelsey Grammer, the rest consisted of bit-parts. And that was only one episode out of a program that ran for some eleven seasons.

By the way, I have seen English actors on dramas that the American Public Broadcasting System gets from the BBC and other British sources for such series' as Masterpiece Theatre playing Americans, but who can't do an American accent worth a damn (and again I say, there are many different American accents). Some do it quite well. But unfortunately, many of them think that all they need to do is talk through their noses and say "Aw reckon" a lot.

The ability to do accents other than one's own convincingly is an individual talent. Some people have it, some don't.

You are right about David though. He sounds like an Aussie.

No, David, I'm not saying that there were (are) possums in Pasadena (Hmm! There's a possible song there! "Possums in Pasadena"). Nor was I aware of any gum trees in my neighborhood, but that was many decades ago. I left the area before I was ten years old.

But David, you certainly do have an amazing knack for dodging the main issue raised by someone's post and fixating on the inconsequential. A rather transparent tactic of evasion.

Don Firth