Star Trek to Scots: How Chris Pine nailed Outlaw King's accent

Chris Pine told Graham Norton that it was the combination of great coaching and Scottish castmates that helped him perfect his Scottish accent.

He said: "I thought I'd get crucified for it but I had a wonderful voice coach and the cast were all Scottish so I figured they would pick me up on things.

"I'm not a method actor, but I would keep up the accent in the pub after filming."

But there's much more to voice work than ordering a few pints in a Scottish pub.

Pine's coach Barbara Berkery revealed that the Star Trek star was continually working on his voice throughout the production.

She said: "Every morning I would meet Chris when he would go to make-up at 6am and we would work for half an hour.

"He was on set all the time so then I just followed him from location to location with my backpack full of poetry. I used that so Chris could find a feel for the language rather than just the accent.

"I went into Waterstones in Sauchiehall Street and the bookseller found me a wonderful poet Peter Mackay who wrote in Gaelic and in English. I gave his book Gu Leòr (Gaelic for Galore) to Chris — it was his absolute favourite."

Pine is far from Berkery's only famous client. She has longstanding relationships with a number of Hollywood's A-listers, having worked five times each with Gwyneth Paltrow, including on Shakespeare in Love and Sliding Doors, and Renée Zellweger, on the Bridget Jones films.

Berkery believes that lengthy preparation is an essential part of an actor nailing an accent.

The casting of a Texan actor to play Bridget Jones was a controversial one. Zellweger went to great lengths to prepare for the role, going "undercover" at publishers' Picador as an English woman called Bridget Cavendish. She would also regularly eat out around London with Berkery while maintaining her adopted accent.

The hard work paid off, with Zellweger's English accent one of the most highly ranked in a poll of fellow actors in conducted in 2017. (Gwyneth Paltrow's performance in Shakespeare in Love was also singled out for praise).

Berkery said of Zellweger: "It was a testament to her talent and hard work. It was a complete transformation; she is a girl with a very strong Texan accent and she did completely transform herself."

Voice coaching can be a quite technical discipline, with students focusing on vowel sounds and diphthongs (one-syllable sounds made up of two vowels). But Berkery adapts her methods to suit the needs and preferences of the client.

She says: "It's a very personal relationship with the actor. The prep time is very important - it's where you get to know the actor.

"All the actors are very different. Chris Pine, for instance, said he liked to work with language.

"Some actors like learning the specific phonetical changes there are, some actors like to be completely instinctive. You have to be sensitive to what the actors needs are."

Berkery continues to be involved with a film well into the post production phase. She says: "The director is going through the film scene by scene in the edit and at a certain point I would be called in.

"I get involved during editing, particularly during the ADR - Automated Dialogue Replacement.

"The dialogue editor might say, 'There was a noise here, we need to redo that line' or 'The accent sounds wrong there'.

"Sometimes they would actually send me the text [audio] of the actor I'm working with before I go in so I can make notes beforehand. You don't have a lot of time and you have to get a lot done, so you have to have it all prepared and ready to go.

"People don't realise my job doesn't stop when shooting ends!"

Outlaw King is in select cinemas and available globally on Netflix from 9 November.