Marina's accent

Because I was either in school or out of the country, I never watched Startrek: The Next Generation when it originally aired. I also wasn't interested in sci-fi until the late 90's, so I never sought TNG out.

Now that I've had more free time this month, I've decided to watch as many episodes I can because everyone says it was a great series. At this point, I feel like I've OD'ed on it, but I'll keep watching until I've seen all the episodes (or at least most of them).

By now, I've heard Marina Sirtis' accent so often, I had to find out what the heck it is. I read that she grew up in London and her parents came from Greece, so I wondered if her accent on the show came from that combination. But a TNG fan friend told me that she has a British accent.

I found out that

In the show, her English accent isn't heard because she uses a combination of accents that she devised. As she puts it, "In the 24th century, geographical or nationalistic barriers are not so evident. The Earth as a planet is your country, your nationality. I didn't want anyone to be able to pin down my accent to any particular country, and being good at accents, the producers trusted me to come up with something appropriate."

In an interview, someone asked her, "How has Troi evolved?" and she said, "Well, she's not foreign anymore. When we started, she had almost this Russian accent, and now she's almost American."

But Wikipedia says that at the end of the horrendous, tripe-filled Enterprise series, "Marina Sirtis' accent as Deanna Troi is less pronounced and more British, which is in keeping with the way she played the character towards the end of the series and into the movies."

During a fan interview, someone asked, "Marina, you were great on Stargate SG-1. Was it easier for you to pick up a Russian accent than a Betazoid accent?" and she said, "Russian was harder, because I had to be accurate. Betazoid I made up and as I was the first Betazoid we'd ever met, who was going to tell me I was doing it wrong?"

So the answer to my query is that she created a unique accent that morphed, a Russian accent is more difficult, and I really need to get a life because I'm becoming a geek.