2. Ray Winstone – The Departed (2006)
No list of jarringly bad accents would be complete with Ray Winstone’s in The Departed. In Scorcese’s classic remake of 2002 Hong Kong film Internal Affairs, Winstone’s Mr. French has one of the weirdest non-accents ever captured on film.
It’s truly impossible to fully describe in words how Winstone sounds, because it’s unlike any natural accent that has ever issued from a human being’s mouth on this Earth.
Despite playing a Boston mobster, Winstone’s lines are delivered in the manner of someone who recently took a heavy blow to the head and has forgotten where he’s from, as he changes accents mid-sentence as though he’s trying on as many hats. It’s an unexpected and unintentional moment of comedy in a straight-faced crime thriller, and hearing it come from apparent tough-guy Ray Winstone makes it all more hilarious.