Gruber’s American accent was one hell of a hard thing to manage

In that scene where Gruber has to drop his German accent and speak as an American to pretend to be a hostage who got away, posed some serious problems. As an Englishman, doing a German accent isn’t that hard, but to then try to get an American accent out of that was tough for Rickman. McTiernan was never happy with how Rickman spoke, shooting the scene several times, trying to get him to sound less hokey and more like an American. Which was strange; for such a talented actor, to not be able to get an American accent right, was baffling.