Sophia puts the accent on mimicry
SOPHIA MYLES is acquiring a reputation as a woman of many voices. In Tristan + Isolde she pulls off a convincing Irish accent, in the upcoming Art School Confidential she is American, and in Thunderbirds she had the ultimate posh totty accent as Lady Penelope.
Now Sophia is attempting one of her biggest challenges by tackling a Scots accent in Hallam Foe. She is working hard with former River City star Jo Cameron Brown, one of the country’s leading dialect coaches.
“For me it’s my favourite part of what I do for a living,” says Sophia, “the challenge of taking on a new accent. Since I was a very young kid my brother and I used to mimic people, I love it. I worked with a brilliant dialect coach on Tristan + Isolde and he taught James Franco to do English and me to do Irish. Also being submerged in Ireland when we were shooting makes it so much easier when you’re hearing it constantly.”
In Hallam Foe Sophia plays a human resources manager in an Edinburgh hotel.
“Hallam Foe is a coming of age story of Jamie Bell’s character, his mother passed away two years before the film starts and he’s unhappy at home,” she says.
“He goes to Edinburgh to try and find a job and get away from it all. He sees a girl on the street who happens to look the spitting image of his mum so he gravitates towards me and gets a job at the hotel and then it gets all very dark.”
The next big date on her calendar is May 6. That’s when she is in an episode of Dr Who with boyfriend David Tennant.
The two met while filming the episode The Girl In The Fireplace.
“When my agent called and said I’d been offered Dr Who I thought ‘Brilliant, I’m going to meet the Daleks’,” she laughs. “It turned out I was going to be in a corset in Versailles as Madame Du Pompadour. She is the mistress of Louis XIV and in Dr Who terms has known the Dr since she was a very young girl and he’s visited her through the course of her life.”
“I used to watch Dr Who when I was a kid so to be in it is such a privilege,” says Sophia. “It’s a job you can’t say no to. It’s a bit like being called to jury service, it’s not cool to say no.”