The 25 Worst Fake Boston Accents in TV and Movies

Boston, Massachusetts has long been a popular setting for movies and television shows. Plenty of cinema-worthy terrains—beaches, mountains, woodlands, and cityscapes—exist within a short drive from Beantown's center. And when it comes to adding authenticity to a Boston-set film, there are a couple of easy ways: at least one reference to the Red Sox and a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee placed firmly in someone's hand.

Sounds simple enough. But there's also one surefire way for a director or actor to quickly go astray: the accent. Only a native Bostonian can truly nail this—which is probably why Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are so often cast in movies that take place in the Bay State. Other actors (even the most talented of them) unfortunately don't fare so well.

Here are the 25 Worst Fake Boston Accents in TV and Movies.

Played by: Willem Dafoe
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In Troy Duffy's cult classic, Willem Dafoe plays a conflicted FBI agent who can't decide whether to arrest or assist fraternal twins Conor (Sean Patrick Flannery) and Murphy McManus (Norman Reedus) in their mission to rid Beantown of its evildoers.

Willem's accent is equally conflicted; for the most part, he delivers his lines as if he's waxing excited about FAGE Greek yogurt. But he can't help himself from dropping an "R" every now and then.

Played by: John Ratzenberger
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As Cheers' resident know-it-all-mailman, Cliff Clavin's accent isn't so much incorrect as it is a heavily exaggerated version of "old-fashioned" Boston-speak, which favors a low back vowel. Which makes Cliff's barstool buddy "Nahm" instead of Norm.

Played by: Tony Curtis
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The only thing more disturbing than Tony Curtis' frightening turn as accused Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo is the fact that he seems to have mistaken a Brooklyn articulation for a Boston one. Oh, the horror!

Played by: Dan Castellaneta
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Joe Quimby, the Mayor of Springfield, can be forgiven for his east coast twang for one reason and one reason only: He's doing his best approximation of John F. Kennedy. But as any true Bostonian knows, the only person to ever speak like a Kennedy was a Kennedy.

Played by: Amy Adams
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She got the semi-big hair right. But Amy Adams is one of many talented actors to learn a simple lesson the hard way: Never attempt a Boston accent when starring alongside native speaker Mark Wahlberg.

Played by: Joe Pesci
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Drop one of Martin Scorsese's most badass mobsters into a class at Harvard and you've got Joe Pesci in With Honors, where he plays an ailing homeless man holding the thesis paper of a privileged student (Brendan Fraser) hostage. As you might imagine, important lessons are learned by both parties throughout the 103-minute running time. Let the sappiness ensue!

Played by: Robin Williams
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Like Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon is one of those actors who no co-star should ever attempt to out-Boston. Then again, Robin Williams won an Oscar for his role in Good Will Hunting while Damon lost to Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. So either the Academy looked past Williams' botched attempts at sounding like he was from Southie or they didn't know any better.

Played by: Tim Robbins
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The Academy strikes again! Tim Robbins may have failed at perfecting true Masshole dialect, but he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as a kidnap victim-turned-murder suspect.

Played by: Laura Linney
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Fortunately for Laura Linney—and viewers with sensitive ears—her role as power-loving wife to gangster Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) in Clint Eastwood's crime drama doesn't log a lot of screen time.

Played by: Michelle Williams
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When it comes to Boston-set movies, Martin Scorsese fared much better the second time around when he shot Shutter Island four years after The Departed. Michelle Williams is the unfortunate broad A-lovin' standout. Fortunately, like Laura Linney in Mystic River, her screen time is limited.

Played by: Jack Nicholson
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It's official: We've reached The Departed part of this story, a film notable for a few different reasons.

1. After seven Oscar nominations, it's the first movie to earn Martin Scorsese an actual win.

2. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon—the two guys you don't want to go up against in instructing someone to "park the car."

3. It features a plethora of wicked bad accents. First up is Jack Nicholson, as gangster Frank Costello (a character loosely based on Irish mobster Whitey Bulger), whose attempts to sound threatening often end up sounding unintentionally comical.

Played by: Leonardo DiCaprio
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Yep, The Departed again! If ever there were a word that could trip up an actor's ability to keep an accurate Boston accent, it might be "microprocessors." (That's Martin Sheen—also failing to deliver the goods—on the phone.)

Played by: Alec Baldwin
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Please! Enough with the microprocessors!

Played by: Jeff Bridges
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Jeff Bridges plays Jimmy Dove, the head of a Boston bomb squad who likes to throw out wisecracks and drop his Rs. Which gives him ample opportunity to shout things like "There’s something in the cahh!"

Played by: Mel Gibson
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Mel Gibson's turn as a detective investigating the murder of his daughter proved that foreign-born actors have not got a leg up when it comes to sounding like they're from Massachusetts' capital city.

Played by: Rob Morrow
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Boston. Brookline. Harvard lawyer Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow) can nitpick geography all he wants. Either way you slice it, his accent stinks.

Played by: Amy Madigan
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No two actors share the exact same process. Case in point: Both Amy Madigan and Amy Ryan practiced their accents by listening to tapes of co-star—and Boston native—Jill Quigg tell stories. Ryan ended up with a spot-on imitation and Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress; Madigan ended up on this list.

Played by: Diane Lane
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First things first: Not all Boston accents are created equally. Dialects differ between neighborhoods—a South Boston drawl, for example, is distinct from a Gloucester one. Diane Lane doesn't come close to nailing either one of them in this Oscar-nominated disaster film. Blame it on Wahlberg again!

Played by: Blake Lively
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Fortunately for Blake Lively, her incredibly expressive face makes it easier to overlook her unfortunate effort to sound like a townie. Oh, wait.

Played by: Kevin Costner
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Bruce Greenwood playing JFK in this docudrama about the Cuban Missile Crisis is spot-on. Kevin Costner as the President's Special Assistant? Not so much. Having to use the phrase "nuclear war" throughout the film does not help Costner's cause.

Played by: Rachel Griffiths
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As if Rachel Griffiths playing the mother of Johnny Depp—who is five years her senior—wasn't funny enough already, she has to open her mouth: "Look at this credenza" indeed!

Played by: Tom Hanks
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There's no mention of Carl Hanratty—the FBI agent who chases, captures, and ultimately befriends con man Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can—being from Boston. But Tom Hanks didn't get to be one of the world's biggest superstars without doing his research. And he clearly learned that Joseph Shea, the agent upon whom Hanratty is based, was born in Brookline. If ever there were a time to resist the urge to attempt authenticity, this would be it.

Played by: Holly Hunter
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It doesn't help Holly Hunter that her character name alone in Once Around—Renata Bella—is a Boston tongue-twister. Still, she could have taken a cue from her co-stars when it comes to non-rhotic speech patterns. Subtlety goes a long way!

Played by: Kevin Costner
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Apparently, the first round of jeers for his terrible, no good, very bad Boston intonation in Thirteen Days didn't teach Kevin Costner a lesson. A decade in between that role and this one proved that unnatural pronunciations are not like a fine wine; they don't improve with age.

Played by: Julianne Moore
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She may have scored an Oscar nod for playing fictional porn star Amber Waves in P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights, but Julianne Moore's turn as Nancy Donovan—the long lost teenage love of TGS boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin)—on 30 Rock proved that the highly lauded actress can't do everything. And by "everything" we mean a proper Boston accent. It actually hurts the ears to listen to this cacophony of mangled pronunciations.