British accents are perfect for film villains because they are seen as more educated but less trustworthy, according to researchers. Actors from the UK who speak with Received Pronunciation are seen as more physically attractive and from a higher class based on how they speak, a prominent linguist has claimed. But Chi Luu said they are also seen “less trustworthy, sincere and friendly” than non-RP accents. Writing in online academic journal website Jstor, Miss Luu said that such characteristics were a ‘good start for a villain’. So many British actors have played the bad guys that that they have nearly become a genre in their own right. Arguably the archetypal British villain is George Sanders who did the voice for Shere Khan in the Jungle Book in 1967. Others have included Christopher Lee as Saruman in ‘Lord of the Rings’ and Anthony Hopkins who played Hannibal Lecter in ‘Silence of the Lambs’. Miss Luu, a computational linguist who has worked with Microsoft and written numerous papers and articles, said that her analysis of research into accents showed that people had a very clear idea of what an RP accent meant. She wrote, “Speakers of the prestige Received Pronunciation (RP) accent are regularly evaluated by non-RP speakers as more educated, intelligent, competent, physically attractive, and generally of a higher socioeconomic class. At the same time, in terms of social attractiveness, those same posh RP speakers are consistently rated less trustworthy, kind, sincere, and friendly than speakers of non-RP accents. Sounds like a good start for a villain.” Miss Luu said that RP works better for a villain than other regional accents from the UK because they are seen as comparatively more intelligent as them too. However that may be starting to change as the villain in the superhero comedy ‘Deadpool’ was played by British actor Ed Skrein, who spoke in a Cockney accent. Miss Luu said that overall people “love” hearing different accents and part of the appeal of a British voice for Americans may be simply because it is different. What also helps is the concept of ‘standard language ideology’, or the belief that there is an ideal form of language from which others deviate – many see RP as this ‘ideal’. Miss Luu wrote, “Speakers of the standard form are considered the ones that ‘have no accent’ and any dialect that strays from from that is stigmatized in one way or another. Believing in this concept legitimizes the institutional discrimination of those who don’t use or didn’t grow up with the standard language. The reality is of course that everyone has an accent.” Other famous British villains have included Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Donald Pleasence as Blofeld in the James Bond films. Sir Ian McKellen played Magneto in ‘X-Men’ and Ralph Fiennes was Lord Voldemort in the ‘Harry Potter’ series.