I never really saw Heathcliff as an evildoer, more as a passsionate soul, though he did get a bit grumpy at times. And I'm responding to the book rather than the film. Joseph had the best lines in the book I thought: 'It's bonny behaviour, lurking amang t' fields, after twelve o' t' night, wi' that fahl, flaysome divil of a gipsy, Heathcliff! They think I'm blind; but I'm noan: nowt ut t' soart!--I seed young Linton boath coming and going, and I seed yah gooid fur nowt, slattenly witch! nip up and bolt into th' house, t' minute yah heard t' maister's horse--fit clatter up t' road.' They don't write speech like that any more!

Yes, what is it with American films--have they run out of actors over there? Every second role seems to be played by an Aussie or a Pom. I just watched The Invasion with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Jeremy Northam. And 3:10 to Yuma has Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as the main cowboys. That's almost as bad as having Kirk Douglas in The Man from Snowy River.

[FOsen]

There's an interplay in the comedy, Bottleshock, between Alan Rickman's English wine critic and Bill Pulman's California vintner that brought down the house at the screening:

BP: Why don't I like you?

AR: Because you think I'm an asshole. And I'm not, really. I'm just British and you're, well, not.

[David Anthony]

Originally posted by Paul Stevens:
It's not so much the English accent as one variety of it: Received Pronunciation. Speakers with other accents from England such as Yorkshire, Somerset or Northumberland don't seem to be evildoers in American films. So perhaps its some notion of sophisticated decadence at work.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/

--What about Sean Bean? He has a Sheffield accent.
It was seeing him in 'Don't Say a Word' that set me off; also 'Patriot Games' where he does an Irish accent.

I believe you're a South Yorkshireman yourself, Paul, but I'd be the first to say that it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person.

[John Whitworth]

Does anybody remember a truly terrible film called Straw Dogs, full of people with Somerset accents being very bad indeed? Dustin Hoffman and asorted bloody-minded yokels.

David, I haven't seen Don't Say a Word but, born in Sheffield, I am a very evil person indeed--though my accent is more Australian than Yorkshire.

And John, of course pirates too have Somerset or Devon accents. But are pirates really evil?

[R. S. Gwynn]

Ah, Straw Dogs, which told Us that Your rednecks are as nasty as Our rednecks. Actually, the scariest rednecks I've ever seen are in the upper Hudson Valley. They all have names like Guido and their pickup trucks are riddled with what looks like either rust or bullet holes.

Susan George. I miss her. What a tart. The Killing of Sister George, et al.

[Janet Kenny]

I'm not quite here at the moment but wanted to say that John's poem is a classic.

HERE is the ultimate English cad.

Janet

[R. S. Gwynn]

We always had a bunch of homegrown Brits posing as evil Brits, like Basil Rathbone (though he was a nice Brit as Holmes). Actually we've always been nice to most Brits--Lesley Howard, Claude Raines, Olivier, et al. And there were always folks like C. Aubrey Smith upholding the Raj. Americans just can't play Brits very effectively, though it's pretty clear that Brits can go the other way--Branagh, Wilkinson, etc. Boris Karloff, how he must have loathed that screen name!

Renée Zellweger and Gwyneth Paltrow did quite well I thought at playing Brits.

[John Whitworth]

Nobody has mentioned (re Americans being Brit) Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. And what was that Western written by Alan Sharpe entirely populated by Scots and Irish (who are honorary Brits after all)? The best Bad Brit of all was surely Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon. And< janet, when you mentioned the ultimate cad, I KNEW it would be Terry-Thomas, according to Kingsley ASmis a genuinely funny man in real life.