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" No matter how refined you are, in the presence of Sir Ben Kingsley you become Barney from The Simpsons. On this fall morning in the lounge of a Manhattan hotel, the Oscar-winning actor&amp;#039;s intensity, elegance, and zillion-dollar black pinstripe suit all conspire to make normal humans feel as if they should be packing meat for a living. The half-Indian, half-English actor won a Best Actor Award for 1982&amp;#039;s Gandhi and earned a supporting nomination for playing thug Don Logan in 2000&amp;#039;s Sexy Beast. In this month&amp;#039;s House of Sand and Fog, he plays Behrani, an exiled Iranian colonel who battles Jennifer Connelly for ownership of a California beach house. We quizzed him on his secrets over tea.  ESQ: Should you have won the Oscar for Sexy Beast?  BK: Oof, I have no idea. Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go. That&amp;#039;s all I can say to your difficult question, really.  ESQ: If I wanted to sound Iranian, what would I do? BK: I don&amp;#039;t know. You see, it&amp;#039;s very hard for me to break down accents into a science because it&amp;#039;s ear and intuition. When I was working as Behrani, my family and the [Iranian] family of Jonny Ahdout, who plays my son, bonded very closely. There were always Iranians around me. ESQ: How long does it take you to work out a character? BK: Two minutes. When I have been wrong, I later realized I was projecting stuff into the screenplay that wasn&amp;#039;t there. But usually when I&amp;#039;m on target, it&amp;#039;s two minutes.  ESQ: Don Logan in Sexy Beast, two minutes? BK: Less. When I turned the page, there was Don, smashing my head right into the page [affecting cockney accent]: &amp;quot;Fuck you!&amp;quot; Bang!  ESQ: Do you ever use dialogue coaches? BK: No, no. Don Logan, for example, came straight from my gut. I do have a very good ear, and in my days with the Royal Shakespeare Company, there were backstage crew covered in tattoos, with shaved heads and string vests. How can I put this delicately? These men were acquainted with certain areas of society. I remember -- this was going back 20 years -- a stagehand said to an actor colleague of mine, &amp;quot;Oy, Terry. I &amp;#039;eard you &amp;#039;ad your fucking car stolen.&amp;quot; Terry said, &amp;quot;Yes, I did.&amp;quot; The stagehand said, &amp;quot;You want it back?&amp;quot; And he got his car back the next day. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a2628/esq0104-kingsley/>