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Los Angeles - Character actor and Hollywood dialect coach Robert Easton, whose successes include teaching Forest Whitaker to speak like Idi Amin in the 2006 movie The Last King of Scotland, has died in Los Angeles. He was 81.
Daughter Heather Woodruff Perry tells the Los Angeles Times that Easton died of natural causes on Monday at his home.
Easton's movie credits include Paint Your Wagon, Pete's Dragon, Pet Sematary II and Primary Colors.
As a dialect coach, he worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston, Liam Neeson, Anne Hathaway and Robert Duvall.
When he was younger, he mainly played country bumpkins on TV shows because of his Southern drawl.
He feared being typecast, so he worked on different accents and learned he could mimic regional speech patterns.
