Mindhole Blowers: 10 Actors You Might Not Know Are Bilingual

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | June 11, 2013 |

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | June 11, 2013 |

Accents are difficult, but the degree of difficulty is much higher when it’s a completely different language (says the dumb American). We all know about Bradley Cooper’s fluency in French, but there are quite a few other actors you might not know are also bilingual.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t include actors whose first languages were NOT English (although, Charlize Theron’s first language apparently is Afrikaans, but it sounds awesome so shut up), and I limited the list actors to those with whom I could find video evidence, which meant that some bilingual actors were excluded like William Shatner (French), Clint Eastwood (Italian), Morgan Freeman (French), Jon Heder (Japanese), and purportedly Hugh Grant (French). Some, clearly, are more fluent than others, but this is not a translation exam. It’s a “Seriously Random List.” Try to focus less on the Seriously and more on the Random.

Viggo Mortensen — Danish

Charlize Theron — Afrikaans

Natalie Portman — Hebrew

Casey Affleck — Spanish

Gwyneth Paltrow — Spanish

Colin Firth — Italian

Jodie Foster — French

Joseph Gordon-Levitt — French

Mila Kunis — Russian

Sandra Bullock — German

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