Who was the first British actor to win an Oscar for playing an American?
Throughout the history of cinema, various actors have hit a stumbling block when it comes to being able to put on a voice other than their own in a film. Take, for example, Dick Van Dyke’s abomination of a Cockney accent in Mary Poppins, and you’ll have perhaps the finest indication of why it’s often better to use someone from the same country as the character they’re playing.
However, that doesn’t mean that every actor who has ever attempted to portray a character from another country has stumbled over the pronunciation differences, and some have managed to be so convincing in their vocal abilities that others fail to realise that they’re even putting on a voice in the first place.
Daniel Day-Lewis has managed to win Academy Awards for three performances of his, none of which are in his native English accent, while the likes of Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman are also known for having pulled off many different voices that are distinctly different to their own.
Plenty of others have managed to scoop Oscars for having portrayed a character that is from a different country to their own, and considering the amount of actors who hail from the UK but have appeared in American productions is high, there are quite a few performers who have put on their best US accents in roles that have earned the highest of accolades.
But who was the first Brit to have achieved this feat? Since the start of the Academy Awards in 1929, plenty have achieved this, but just how early was the first instance?
The first British actor to win an Oscar for portraying an American
It only took three years of the awards being dished out for a British performer to win an award for ‘Best Actor’, but with George Arliss being given recognition for his portrayal of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the biopic, Disraeli, this was a case of an actor playing someone from his own country. With the majority of the other recipients in this category being American actors in American roles, it took a while for anyone to put on a different voice and win the top prize.
It took until 1939, at the 11th ceremony, for the first instance of a British actor to win an Academy Award in an acting category, with Vivien Leigh putting on her finest Georgian drawl for her role as Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, perhaps one of the most celebrated films from this golden era of Hollywood films. She not only became the first to achieve this, but was the first British performer to win ‘Best Actress’ at the awards.
Also in 1939, British actor Robert Donat also won the award for ‘Best Actor’ for his role as Charles Chipping in Goodbye Mr Chips, although once again, he was playing a character with a British accent. It wasn’t until much later that performers began to get greater recognition for performing in roles with different accents.
Leigh would go on to repeat this feat for a second time, winning a second Oscar for her performance as Blanche DuBois in the 1951 film, A Streetcar Named Desire. While plenty of other British actors have received an Oscar for a performance as an American, including Daniel Kaluuya, Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton, only Day-Lewis has matched Leigh’s achievements of having done this on two occasions.
