There’s a fine tradition of Hollywood’s finest playing British characters on stage and screen and - not to put too fine a point on it - mangling our regional accents in the process.

Who can forget the sound of the Missouri-born Dick Van Dyke ‘gor blimeying’ his way through the Cockney chimney sweep Bert, in Disney’s 1964 favourite Mary Poppins.

Or Josh Hartnett in Blow Dry, which this newspaper’s film critic described as trotting “happily from Newcastle to Oxbridge, Bristol to Belfast”.

Now Anne Hathaway has stepped forward to admit she too has made something of a hash of our accents in the past, and it’s left her anxious about her latest attempt at playing a Brit.

The star of The Devil Wears Prada and Ocean’s 8 is remembered fondly by aficionados of the genre for her demolition of a Yorkshire brogue in the 2011 romance One Day

So, eight years on, she is more than aware that the critics will have their pens sharpened for her appearance in the forthcoming comedy The Hustle, in which she stars as a con woman alongside Rebel Wilson.

"I found out I had to do it a week before we started shooting. I thought if I didn't do it, it wouldn't make a difference, but the director insisted,” she said.