Golden Globe winner Colin Farrell is renowned in Hollywood for his effortless vocal acrobatics. His most memorable roles have involved convincingly accurate accents that have fooled many moviegoers without missing a beat. Yet, the actor has revealed there’s one dialect that’s proved most difficult for the high profile Dubliner. 

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Farrell was a recent guest on the wildly popular YouTube series, Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans dived into his role as Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot/The Penguin in Matt Reeves’ The Batman among other things. When asked which was the most tedious or time-consuming dialect he’s had to master for movie roles over the years he replied:

Honest to God, I’ve tried a couple of times to do, I don’t know what you would call it, ‘standard American.’ When someone says ‘standard American accent,’ and I find that the trickiest. Because generalities don’t really help you as an actor. Within the specificity that you’ve found yourself aligned with then there’s room for play of course. But just ‘a general American accent’, it sounds vague. It almost sounds insulting. It sounds like you’re not respecting the character or the project or the script.

Farrell has brought to life a myriad of vocally diverse roles in his decades-long career. 

His transformation for the role of Penguin The Batman required heavy prosthetic makeup and a bodysuit that rendered the actor unrecognizable. While his Gotham City brogue wasn’t standard by any stretch, he has used a “regular” American accent in previous films like S.W.A.T and The Recruit, taking things up a notch by serving a Southern drawl while playing the notorious Jesse James in American Outlaws, as well as in Crazy Heart. 

His natural Irish brogue is heard in films such as The Killing of A Sacred Deer, Intermission Daredevil, Veronica Guerin, The New World, and The Beguiled, among others.

Farrell also brought his best British accents to films like London Boulevard and Cassandra’s Dream.