Spanish actors and their English pronunciation

Spanish people have a reputation abroad for speaking languages terribly. They are not alone in that, and there are even worse examples, but that's the reputation. What about spanish artists, like actors or singers. In the case of actors, the reference is Hollywood, of course, and to enter Hollywood as an equal, you have to be accepted and that is hard work. Fame costs!

Now, in the last few years, things have changed for the better. Now I am going to focus on three different stages of that process. The interesting thing is these three people know each other very well: Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. The reason I have chosen them is because they exemplify three very clear stages of pronunciation development in foreign learners of English. First, Mr. Banderas:

In this interview you can notice that his English is very fluent, he has no problem getting his message across and he understands the journalist very well. However if you look at his acting career, he seems to be doomed to playing the latino character in every film. Why is that? Because the way he sounds is completely foreign. He is pronouncing English with the minimum changes necessary to become just understandable. His vowel sounds, most of his consonants and most suprasegmental features (the things that happen over more than one sound) are brought in from the spanish language. And that's his glass ceiling. Which both Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem have broken for themselves.

My second example is Penélope Cruz. Both her and Javier Bardem have learnt from people like Antonio Banderas who came first, so they have improved a lot their learning process. Merciless immersion brought Antonio only so far. They needed to get a little more professional about it and has been using a voice coach for years. Her progress from virtually speaking no English is praiseworthy. Let's listen to her:

She has gone beyond Antonio Banderas in one significant feature: consonant sounds. Her pronunciation in that sense goes away from Spanish, incorporating many sounds which would not be there in Spanish. However she has two areas to work on: her vowels, which continue to be spanish throughout and the overall impression (what is technically known as suprasegmental features) which still sounds too foreign. Which the audience loves, apparently both in her and in Antonio Banderas.

Finally, we get to Javier Bardem, the best pupil of the three. If my sources (google) are correct, his coach for "No country for old men" was Howard Samuelsohn. Let's hear how he spoke after Vicky Cristina Barcelona:

We can very easily this is a different level, and it is higher: vowels may not be perfect, but they definitely sound much more english, consonants are mostly correct and he has a good grasp of intonation and conversational cues. You still notice he is a foreigner, but an accomplished one.

All this goes to show that for all the talk about how natural, sink-or-swim immersion, to achieve fine-grain advanced quality, coaching  and hard work are definitely needed. The videos I have used are deliberately not recent. So I expect the three of them have continued to improve. Keep the good work!