Philadelphia actress wows Web with 21 accents

"Hello. My name is Amy Walker. I'm 25, and . . .

"I was born in London, England . . ."

"I was born in Sydney, Australia . . ."

"I was born in Charleston, S.C. . . ."

I was just interviewed on the "Today" show by Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, and I performed some of the 21 accents from my Web video that has caught fire.

Until recently, Walker was a little-known actress who moved to Philadelphia on a whim last year after unsuccessfully chasing a dream to star in The Lovely Bones, which is being directed by Peter Jackson.

Now fame is chasing her: She performed a virtual mini-monologue on the No. 1 network morning show yesterday, and the hosts joked about getting a cut of her future wealth.

For the moment - Internet fame can be fleeting - Walker has gained an international audience, and she is riding the wave.

"I'm a very intuitive person," said Walker, a petite beauty with a movie-star smile. "When I feel something in my entire body that I have to do, I do it."

That was what guided her from her native Whidbey Island near Seattle to the University of Wollongong in Australia to study acting and singing.

After watching all the behind-the-scenes extras on the first Lord of the Rings DVD, she said, she knew she wanted to move to New Zealand, where Jackson directed the Tolkien trilogy.

She set her sights on landing the role of Ruth Connors in The Lovely Bones - based on a best-selling novel by Alice Sebold set in Norristown - but fell short.

"I was really devastated," Walker said.

She took a few weeks to "just let myself be completely empty, not knowing what's next for me."

Though Jackson began filming The Lovely Bones in the Philadelphia suburbs late last year, Walker said she hadn't been trailing the movie. Something about the city, "I didn't know what, was pulling me here," she said.

In December, she moved in with a family friend in Chestnut Hill and began poking around for performance opportunities. In the meantime, she posted videos of her acting and singing on YouTube.

"My awareness of Internet video was almost zero," she said.

But it was enough, and she was glad to get a few hundred views for each video she put online, mainly for her family and friends.

On Jan. 16, Walker posted a video of her saying, "Hello. My name is Amy Walker ..." in 21 accents, a skill she had honed over the years. On the video, Walker cleverly injected flashes of different personalities with the accents.

It didn't do that much better than her other videos.

But on Feb. 29, someone with the screen name DeathWish808 at Break.com, an extremely popular video site known more for girls in sexy outfits and guys falling headfirst off skateboards, posted Walker's YouTube video under the title "Chick Does 21 Different Accents."

Within a day, the video had scored several hundred thousand hits. Quickly, it turned "viral" and popped up on Web sites around the world. Her view count on YouTube also shot up.

It has since garnered at least a million views across the Internet.

"It just blew my mind," Walker said.

She said she had never heard of Break.com before or knew the poster. DeathWish808 did not respond to an interview request.

On the Internet rating site Digg.com, Walker had at least 4,057 "diggs." By comparison, the New York Times story that broke the Eliot Spitzer prostitute scandal had 2,771.

Walker said she hoped to parlay her Internet success into great acting roles. She doesn't have a day job. She is gliding forward on faith.

"I've never had a backup plan," she said.