Stephen Fry's self-doubt

From the "Arts, Briefly" section of the 3.20.07 NY Times:

Is it talent or the accent that brings so many British actors so many American awards? Stephen Fry, below, the British comedian and actor who played the title role in “Wilde,” the 1997 film about Oscar Wilde, raised the question yesterday in the British magazine Radio Times, Agence France-Presse reported. He wrote: “I shouldn’t be saying this — high treason really — but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there. I mean, would they notice if Jeremy Irons or Judi Dench gave a bad performance? Not that those two paragons ever would, but it’s worth considering.” Mr. Fry, describing American actors as more natural than their British counterparts, wrote of “the supreme relaxed authenticity of a James Stewart or a George Clooney compared with the brittle contrivances of a Laurence Olivier or a Kenneth Branagh, marvelous as they are.”