The controversy over Hilaria Baldwin's Spanish heritage is mounting. The yoga instructor and author, who is married to Alec Baldwin, was slammed this week for reportedly pretending to be Spanish, and now she faces accusations that go beyond her allegedly fake accent and heritage.
Two separate reports published on Monday highlight conflicting information and several incidents that suggest she has been faking it all along. According to the New York Post, Hilaria originally claimed in her online biography that she was born in Mallorca, Spain, but in an Instagram video, she admitted to being born in Boston and spending a large portion of her childhood in Massachusetts. It has also emerged that her real name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas and that her mother is a Harvard Medical School professor and her father is a Georgetown University-educated lawyer, the outlet noted.
Giving weight to claims that Hilaria has been faking her accent, TheWrap highlighted several incidents in which she switches between English and Spanish accents. This is most evident in a 2012 ABC interview in which the start of her sentences had a distinct English accent. The outlet also pointed to an NBC "Today" cooking segment in which she forgets the English word for "cucumber," and a 2018 interview with "Today" in which has lost her accent completely.
Hilaria is not the only one who flits between accents. "The X-Files" star Gillian Anderson drew attention for her pristine accent while playing Margaret Thatcher in season four of Netflix's "The Crown."
The actress was born in Chicago but spent years living with her family in London before moving to Michigan at age 11, according to Yahoo! Style. She now lives in London after relocating in the early 2000s. Why is this information important? According to Yahoo!, because of where she has lived, Anderson is bidialectal, which means she is able to switch between English and American accents depending on her location.
All the moving has not been easy for Anderson, who admitted in an interview with Blog Talk Radio that she was confused about her identity.
"I've been asked whether I feel more like a Brit than an American, and I don't know what the answer to that question is!" she said.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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