Crossing the Atlantic ain't easy

uliette Binoche - and Jean Claude van Damme - are two of the few European actors to break America. What's their secret?

* Gwladys Fouché
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday September 10 2008

Steven Spielberg once offered Juliette Binoche a part in Jurassic Park. "If you want me to play a dinosaur," she said, "I'll be happy to do it." She went off to make Three Colours: Blue instead.

Few European actors would dare say no to Hollywood as Binoche did. Every year continental stars who are big in their home countries try to make it Stateside, dreaming of bigger fanbases and fatter paychecks. And every year most of them head back home, tails between their legs.

In the 80s Isabelle Adjani was the reigning queen of French cinema, the woman generations of men fantasised about. But when she tried to replicate her success in the US, she ended up in Ishtar – still ranked as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. She promptly went home, where she returned to her usual excellent self.

Danish superstar Mads Mikkelsen was the new hot thing when he played Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (that most Hollywood of British films). Maybe he was pitted against some unbeatable competition in the sex appeal stakes, but his apparently sizzling charisma failed to translate.

British thesps don't have quite the same problem, as they don't have to deal with the language barrier. All they have to cope with is getting the Yank accent right, some with more success than others. For the likes of Gérard Depardieu or Marcello Mastroianni, it was always going to be a losing battle...

Of course lots of European actors do get work in Hollywood: Antonio Banderas, Thomas Kretschmann, Olivier Martinez, to name but a few. But they're generally typecast as the Latin lover, the Nazi officer or the French sexpot. Others land parts in which dialogue is kept to a minimum - think Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

And even when European actors do get jobs, they are supporting roles (Bardem included), not half as interesting as the ones they might get back home. Penélope Cruz slaved away as the one-dimensional love interest in countless Hollywood productions such as Vanilla Sky or Sahara. It's only when she came home to the arms of Pedro Almodóvar for Volver that she morphed into a huge international star and managed to bag an Oscar nomination.

But there is one genre for which a heavy foreign accent has never been an impediment in Tinseltown: the action film. Whether it's the Muscles from Brussels or the Swedish Iceman, speaking broken English is, if anything, an asset that singles you out from the redneck competition. Just ask the Governator: a foreign accent never did his career any harm.