Viewers of the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar would be excused for thinking the actress playing conwoman Belle Gibson was Australian.

But in a recent interview, American actress Kaitlyn Dever revealed that achieving her near-flawless Aussie twang was no easy feat.

While Australian actors routinely adopt American accents for Hollywood roles, US actors’ attempts to speak Australian have been hit and miss.

“This accent is really hard, it’s so hard,” Dever, 28, told the Skip Intro podcast on the weekend.

She said she worked full time with Melbourne dialect coach Jenny Kent to get her mouth around the accent.

And the word that posed the biggest challenge? – ‘No’.

“My mouth just wasn’t used to it,” Dever said, adding she basically learned Australian pronunciation word by word.

“Thinking back on it, I think I memorised it almost like I would a song,” she said.

Dever, who was born in Phoenix, Arizona, began acting at the age of 15 with her first role in the western crime drama Justified.

Coincidentally, her decision to become an actress came after she was inspired by the performance of Australia’s Toni Collette in 1999’s The Sixth Sense.

Dever’s ability to nail her Aussie accent saw her succeed where some of the greats of the acting world have failed.

Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr had many Australians rolling their eyes when he played an Aussie journalist in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.

But Downey Jr’, whose second attempt as an Australian in the comedy Tropic Thunder was a little more restrained, was positively dinkum compared to British actor Jude Law’s effort.

Law, who played a morally-bankrupt Australian blogger in pandemic thriller Contagion, produced a cringeworthy effort.

Acclaimed US actor John Lithgow says he loved playing Rebel Wilson’s father in Pitch Perfect 3, but many Australian viewers were left scratching their heads at this accent.

Meryl Streep has said she is proud of her accent while portraying Lindy Chamberlain in the 1988 thriller Evil Angels, and while it’s by no means the worst, some Australians would disagree.

But there are some recent gems. Englishman Dev Patel was taught by the same dialect coach as Dever and the result was impressive in 2016’s Lion.