Ex-host of Inside the Actors Studio, 93

LOS ANGELES — James Lipton, an actor-turned-academic who became an unlikely celebrity and got hundreds of master actors and Hollywood luminaries to open up about their craft as the longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio, died Monday.

Lipton died of bladder cancer at his New York home, his wife, Kedakai Lipton, told The New

York Times and the Hollywood

Reporter. He was 93.

The Detroit-born Lipton began the Bravo show in 1994 that also served as a class for his students at the Actors Studio Drama School, where he was then dean.

He often said his only requirement for a guest was whether they had something to teach his students. His first guest, Paul Newman, set a standard of stardom for those that would follow, including Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Glenn Close, Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand.

“Rest in peace, James Lipton. He was interested in the actor’s process, which was so refreshing,” Streisand said in a Twitter post.

Lipton was known, and often parodied, for his highbrow and sometimes worshipful tone with his subjects, and for his intensive preparation, represented by a stack of blue notecards that held his meticulously researched questions. When Will Ferrell played Lipton on Saturday Night Live, the stack of cards was nearly a foot thick.

Many otherwise media-shy actors were willing to appear on Inside the Actors Studio because Lipton focused on their art and not the usual celebrity chatter or project promotion.

“People do not come on to sell a movie and you never hear the words, ‘I’m opening in Vegas in two weeks,’ ” Lipton told The Associated Press in 1996, when the show was in its second season. “That’s what most talk shows depend upon, and that’s fine, but with us we’re getting together to dig as deep as we can.”

He was not afraid to get personal, and often stunned those he interviewed with things he had learned about their childhood or private life. “How did you know that?” was a frequent refrain from his guests.

“Obviously we deal in lots of anecdotes, and even some gossip and secrets,” Lipton told the AP, “but they’re tied together by a concern for and devotion to craft.”

Lipton retired as host in 2018. In the U.S. after World War II, he studied acting with famed teacher Stella Adler as well as production and directing at New York University and the New School. His 1950s stage and screen credits included productions and a television soap opera. Lipton wrote the books and the lyrics for two Broadway musicals.

In the 1990s, as a vice president of the Actors Studio, Lipton helped create the Actors Studio Drama School that brought together the resources of the studio and the New School. He was the founding dean of the graduate-level school, which in 2005 relocated to Pace University, where Lipton remained its dean emeritus.