Hollywood Royalty

MIRREN: Until you nail the accent it is paralyzing. You can't act--you can't do anything--because all you can hear is your voice making the wrong sound. What's even more difficult is what Penelope has done. I think to act in a foreign language is the most unbelievably difficult thing. I can't imagine it.

Penelope, your first English-language film was "The Hi-Lo Country." Was that scary?

CRUZ: Oh, so scary. I didn't understand a word [director] Stephen Frears was saying. He's very sweet, but he has a very strong accent, and I only knew my dialogue for the character. I was always going to the bathroom to cry and coming back and trying to hide it.

Brad, your Irish Gypsy accent in Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" is so great that we can't understand a word you're saying.

PITT: That was last-minute, night-before, full-panic mode. I kept trying to get the dialect--I probably started a little late--and it was just too stiff. I went to Guy the day before and said, "You've got to do this part. I can't do it." And he's, like, "Yeah. Right." But it occurred to me that the genius of what Benicio Del Toro had done in "The Usual Suspects" was that you couldn't understand what he was saying a lot of times. So about midnight, I started walking around the North End of London, working on it and working on it, and it just kept getting more and more indecipherable. Thank God it worked.

BLANCHETT: I never think of accents as something that's slapped on. It's syntax and rhythm and breath. It's about when people choose to pause, what words they emphasize. You can say it's accent, but it's actually thought process. It's got to be organic. And I think the earlier you can start the better.