Hidden behind a fake bushy black beard, blue-tinted sunglasses, and an impressive military uniform emblazoned with a red sash and more gold than Aladdin's Cave, Sacha Baron Cohen was in his element.
A wall of video news cameras was focused on him from the back of a ballroom in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
In the front row, a wall of still photographers sat clicking thousands of frames.
Between the cameras, 100 or so reporters sat, eager to ask Cohen a question.
Well, not Cohen exactly.
Cohen's alter ego for the day, Admiral General Aladeen, the ruthless dictator of the fictional North African republic of Wadiya, was holding court to promote comedy feature film The Dictator.
As Gen Aladeen, Cohen thrived in front of the cameras.
He offered funny one-liners and absurd answers to journalists' questions, ridiculing some reporters for the way they looked and at one point asking to see a journalist's circumcision to prove the scribe was Jewish.
"You are very short," he told a female journalist who struggled to reach up to the microphone in the middle of the room.
"Have you had your legs chopped off?"
As comfortable as Gen Aladeen was in front of the cameras, if the beard were stripped off, the sunglasses tossed away and the glitzy military suit swapped with regular clothes, Cohen probably would not be so confident.
The 40-year-old English comedian is arguably Hollywood's most private actor.
He rarely does interviews as himself.
When he is promoting The Dictator, he is Gen Aladeen.
When he promoted 2006's Borat, he did so as oddball Kazakh journalist Borat.
The same happened in 2009 when he promoted Bruno, another mockumentary as gay Austrian fashion journalist Bruno Gehard.
"Who knows who the real Sacha Baron Cohen is?" says Anna Faris, who played Gen Aladeen's love interest in The Dictator.
Faris spent several weeks on the set with Cohen, but she said he largely remained in character as Gen Aladeen.
When there was a break in shooting, Cohen was not Cohen.
"He's in character a lot of the time, well, most of the time," Faris said.
"I'd say 99% of the time."
For the press conference at the Waldorf in New York, the line of reporters called up to the microphone had their questions pre-approved.
The select group of journalists were asked to put forward questions and if a question was given the green light by Cohen, they were handed a sheet of paper before the press conference with the desired question printed on it.
The reasoning behind the vetting was it gave Cohen a heads-up and time to formulate funny, researched answers.
If a Brazilian journalist asked the sexist Gen Aladeen about female president Dilma Rousseff, he could prepare a funny answer.
The same for an Australian journalist asking about Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Some journalists in the crowd liked the format because they felt it was a system that a crazed, controlling dictator would, in fact, use.
Other media members wondered why Cohen, often referred to as a comic genius, would not wing it and use the quick wit that was on display in his early TV series Da Ali G Show to answer random questions.
The Dictator follows Gen Aladeen as he flies to New York to appear at the United Nations when the world threatens to bomb Wadiya because of his nuclear programme.
A plan to execute Gen Aladeen in New York goes wrong, his beard is removed and he wanders the city and nobody believes he is the hated dictator.
Faris' character, a hippie who runs an organic food store, takes him in.
Faris said Cohen warned her after she was cast that he would become Gen Aladeen throughout the shoot.
"He said for Borat and Bruno, he was in character for more than a year beforehand to get to really know the character," the actress said.
"That's just his process.
"When he was waiting around on set to shoot, we called him 'The Supreme Leader' and sometimes 'Dictator'.
"He is still a mysterious person to me as well."
Cohen married former Home and Away star Isla Fisher in 2010 and the couple have two daughters, 4-year-old Olive and 1-year-old Elula.
It was when Fisher and her daughters were on the set that the cast and crew observed Cohen being Cohen.
"You have to meet him to get it," Sir Ben Kingsley, who plays Gen Aladeen's uncle in The Dictator, said.
"He's a great dad and to see him with his kids is wonderful.
"He's very private, but to glimpse him with his gorgeous wife and girls is a joy."
Kingsley, a four-time Oscar nominee and a best-actor winner in 1983 for Gandhi, also co-starred with Cohen in this year's best-picture Academy Award nominee, Hugo.
As odd as Cohen's characters are and as inflammatory as Gen Aladeen's words can be, Kingsley said the man behind the bushy beard, sunglasses and fancy suit was the polar opposite.
"There are comics who are miserable manic depressives and neurotics and they don't have great, long careers," Kingsley said.
"They come to a sticky end.
"Sacha is the opposite. He is not your neurotic comic.
"He is a lovely guy to be around."
