patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7014 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 49 of 98 08 April 2007 at 12:25pm | IP Logged |
zhiguli wrote:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Connie Nielsen, who speaks Danish, Swedish, German, English, French and Italian (though it's not clear how fluent she is in the latter two). |
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She lived and worked/studied in France and Italy so I would imagine that she's passably fluent in both.
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IbanezFire Senior Member United States Joined 6693 days ago 119 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Russian
| Message 50 of 98 10 April 2007 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
Milla Jovovich is a polyglot - she fluently speaks Russian, French, English and Serbian (Taken from wikipedia)
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johnnyassez Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6720 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, French, German, Spanish
| Message 51 of 98 10 June 2007 at 1:59am | IP Logged |
Anyone who is interested in seeing a 15-year-old Jodie Foster singing in French should check out the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OClsC17XRk
Also, there are a lot of interviews with Jodie conducted in French at the following website: www.ina.fr (do a search for "Jodie Foster" in the search bar on the upper right hand corner of the home page). The videos are free, but you have to pay if you want to watch them full-screen. Some of them date back to when she was only 14 years old (her French was already impeccable back then).
Now, if you want to hear an american actress speaking bad French, do a search for "Sigourney Weaver" at the same website.
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 52 of 98 24 September 2007 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
Maria de Madeiros speaks French, Portuguese and English and perhaps other languages as well.
I have heard the English actresses Emma Thompson and Greta Scacchi being interviewed in French on French TV. Scacchi is of Italian descent: whether she speaks Italian as well, I don't know. Her French was certainly very good. Thompson's French wasn't perfect but was quite good.
I think actors are likely to be above average linguists as a professional group, and am not surprised that a good many of them know languages other than their native one. They're trained to use accents other than their real one, they are trained in enunciation and sometimes phonetics, they are trained to memorise scripts and they are generally quite extroverted. All these are features useful in learning another language.
I heard Jodie Foster speaking French in a recent French film set in World War I which also starred Audrey Tautou. Her accent seemed near-native but she played someone born in Poland, which took care of any slight deviation from a French accent.
Edited by William Camden on 24 September 2007 at 11:19am
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awake Senior Member United States Joined 6635 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish
| Message 53 of 98 24 September 2007 at 1:24pm | IP Logged |
George Takei (Mr. Sulu from Star Trek) Is fluent in Japanese, English, and Spanish
Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) is fluent in English and speaks Polish
Julie Dreyfus (Sophie Fatale in Kill Bill) is fluent in English, French and Japanese
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 54 of 98 24 September 2007 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
Ville Haapasalo speaks Finnish, Russian, English and Swedish. Not sure how fluent he is in the latter two, but he's natively fluent in Russian.
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 55 of 98 10 October 2007 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
I read a biography of Michael Caine, it might have been called Raising Caine but I'm not sure. At some point in his early life, I think before he took up acting but after he was discharged from the Army (he fought in the Korean War), he headed off to France and picked up labouring work. I think it was at a time when he was frustrated with things in Britain, and he decided he needed some new scenery for a while. Apparently he became fluent in French as a result, though I'm not aware of him using it in any films. Of course, knowing French doesn't make him a polyglot, so perhaps he is outside the scope of this thread.
Edited by William Camden on 11 October 2007 at 7:58am
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 56 of 98 04 November 2007 at 3:38pm | IP Logged |
The German actress Franka Potente (best-known film probably Lola rennt) spoke good English when interviewed on British TV. I believe she also knows French and Italian.
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