Dianne J. Winslow, Dialect Coach

Actors far and wide owe some kind of debt to dialect coach Dianne J. Winslow, who teaches them how to say what they say when there’s a an accent involved. Winslow’s talents can be heard in Arizona Theatre Company’s Pride and Prejudice at the Herberger; here, she considers Harpo Marx, the Bush administration, and membership in the House of Windsor.

I knew I wanted to be in show business when I played the dead body in Durrenmatt’s The Physicists.

The worst thing about being a dialogue coach is that you only get noticed when things go wrong.

The happiest day in my life was when Skipper came home.

If I could be anyone other than myself, it would be Shakespeare’s scribe.

It’s not entirely true, but I sometimes tell people that I’m a member of the House of Windsor.

The fictional character I am most like is Ripley from Alien Resurrection.

I am utterly terrified of the next two years of the Bush administration.

The rain in Spain is a tedious refrain.

I laugh uncontrollably at John Cleese in Fawlty Towers.

The one thing I absolutely refuse to do, professionally, is take off my clothes, no matter how difficult the dialect.

Something I have never admitted to anyone before is that I can, on rare occasion, be wrong.

My favorite dialect is whatever I am currently working on.

And I hate having to teach people to speak like Harpo Marx.

Currently I am reading Animal Speak by Ted Andrews.

The first time I got drunk I won a cutthroat game of charades.

Like my father used to say, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”