Fan Casting Fake American in Sort by Tropes

The United States has the largest native English-speaking population in the world — 334 million (1/3 of a billion) — and due to the tremendous global influence of American-produced media, most non-Americans are familiar with the country's dialects and accents and assume them easy to imitate. Thus it's not uncommon for any non-American actor to be asked to sound American for a part. Fake Americans are usually Canadians (the two countries extensively border each other and their generic accents are almost the same, making it easy for the actor to hide any quirks that could give them away), Brits, Australians or Irish, although New Zealanders and even South Africans have been known to fake American. This is usually done for biographical reasons, to allow for a familial relationship with another character with an American accent, or to portray a character as stereotypically American. Interestingly enough, the Fake American is not usually Mexican, even though the United States of America and The United Mexican States (official name of Mexico) share two-thirds of their name with each other and the southwestern third of the former was the northern half of the latter before 1848, or Jamaican (has its own distinct accent, known as Jamaican Patois), Belizean, or Indian, even though the three are Anglophone countries like the USA.