I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge, I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my Cockney accent.
For people to understand, you can't speak 'cinema.' Cinema doesn't have alphabets, so you have to go to the local language. Even in England, if they make a movie in London they have to make it in the Cockney accent, they can't make a film with the English spoken in the BBC. So cinema has to be realistic to the area that it is set in.
Slang has always moved this way. From Cockney rhyming slang to codes swapped among highwaymen, they're tribal badges of identity, bonding mechanisms designed to distinguish the initiated, and to keep strangers out.
I grew up with Jilly and Tamsin driving Volvos. But I wasn't one of them... I always felt more comfortable with Cockney and working-class people. My heroes were the Beatles and people like Michael Caine.
Signor Adolfo Pirelli: Mr.Todd?
Sweeney Todd: Signor Pirelli.
Signor Adolfo Pirelli: [reverting to a Cockney accent] Call me Davy. Davy Collins is the name when it isn't professional.
Fletcher: I think the time has come for me to introduce you to our queen. A Cockney Cleopatra to Mickey's cowboy Caesar. The only weak link, in his otherwise impregnable armor, is his devotion, his passion, some would say his obsession, with his beauteous lady wife.
Rosie: [in a very Cockney accent] Excuse me! Hello! This is a hen party. Women only! Thank you.
Sam Carmichael: Okay.
