40 Fun Facts About Inside the Actors Studio

Which Saturday Night Live star played James Lipton in sketches spoofing Inside the Actors Studio?

Will Ferrell mimicked the host's paused, clipped delivery, and the real Lipton enjoyed the impersonation.

James Lipton steered every Inside the Actors Studio interview from a tall stack of what?

Index cards held his heavily researched questions, which often startled guests with details of their own lives.

The final question of the Inside the Actors Studio questionnaire imagines each guest arriving where?

The pearly gates set the scene: guests say what they would like to hear God tell them on arrival. The French original asked simply what God should say to the guest after death.

Which cable channel, later famous for The Real Housewives, first aired Inside the Actors Studio?

Bravo was then a channel devoted to film and the performing arts, and the interview series soon became its flagship program.

Which star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the first guest seen on Inside the Actors Studio?

Paul Newman was a former president of the Actors Studio, and he set the standard of stardom for the hundreds of guests who followed.

Which comedian did James Lipton pick to interview him when Lipton sat in the guest chair?

Dave Chappelle, who had been a guest himself in 2006, swapped seats with the host for the program's 200th show.

Which screen legend, a charter member of the Actors Studio, flatly refused James Lipton's invitations to appear?

Marlon Brando would talk to the host by phone for hours, yet he had turned reclusive and nobody could coax him out of the house.

Which actor asked Sean Penn a question from the audience, then returned to Inside the Actors Studio as a guest?

Bradley Cooper was earning a master's at the Actors Studio Drama School in 1999, and both he and the host teared up when he came back as a guest in 2011.

Which animated sitcom spoofed James Lipton by having an action-star character shoot him during an interview?

The Simpsons had Rainier Wolfcastle, its Arnold Schwarzenegger parody, open fire on the host. The show's voice cast later appeared together as real guests.

Which French television host inspired the questionnaire that closed every Inside the Actors Studio interview?

Bernard Pivot learned of the borrowing and invited Lipton onto the final episode of his own cultural talk show to answer the questions alongside him.

The Inside the Actors Studio questionnaire descends from a parlor game answered by which French novelist?

Marcel Proust wrote his answers in a friend's confession album, a Victorian craze, and the manuscript sold at auction in 2003 for more than 100,000 euros.

The seventh question of the Inside the Actors Studio questionnaire asks each guest for a favorite what?

Curse word is one of ten items on the list. The others include what turns a guest on, what turns a guest off, and a least favorite word.

Two back-to-back items of the Inside the Actors Studio questionnaire ask about which of these?

Sound gets two items in a row: each guest names a noise they love, then one they hate.

The Actors Studio is best known for refining which approach, in which performers draw on their own emotions?

Method acting asks performers to identify with a character's inner motivation, and the Studio lets members take such risks in private, away from the pressure of commercial roles.

Which Russian director's 'system' of actor training underpins the technique taught at the Actors Studio?

Konstantin Stanislavski built the system at the Moscow Art Theatre, after a crisis in his own performing in 1906 set him looking for ways past an actor's blocks.

The Actors Studio's home on West 44th Street in New York was originally built as what?

A church in the Greek Revival style, built for a Presbyterian congregation in the late 1850s, has housed the Studio since 1955 and is now a New York City landmark.

In which Manhattan neighborhood, long a haven for aspiring actors, does the Actors Studio stand?

Hell's Kitchen drew newcomers with once-low rents and a short walk to the Broadway theatres, and the Studio settled there in 1955 after eight years of moving around.

Which Hollywood star, never a member, was among the rare outsiders invited to present work at the Actors Studio?

Marilyn Monroe began attending the Studio's workshops in 1955 and grew so close to its director and his wife that she took private lessons at their home because of her shyness.

Which longtime Actors Studio director earned an Oscar nomination as gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II?

Lee Strasberg took the role at the suggestion of a former student in the cast, after one of the Studio's founders had turned it down.

Which Godfather star was rejected by the Actors Studio as a teenager, then later became its co-president?

Al Pacino trained instead at HB Studio, another New York acting school, and after four years there he auditioned again and got in.

On which Detroit-made radio western did a young James Lipton play the hero's nephew, Dan Reid?

The Lone Ranger hired him soon after high school, when he still planned to become a lawyer and was acting only to pay for his education.

On which long-running soap opera did James Lipton act for a decade and rise to head writer?

Guiding Light cast him as Dr. Dick Grant from 1952 to 1962, and the serial went on to become the longest-running American soap opera.

James Lipton wrote a book on 'terms of venery', the names for groups of animals, with which birds in its title?

Larks gather in an exaltation, the phrase that titles the book, which mixes genuine old group names with ones Lipton made up himself.

James Lipton produced the first televised presidential inaugural gala, held for which incoming US president?

Jimmy Carter's gala was one of some two dozen television specials Lipton produced, a list that also runs to an entertainment special made in China.

For which veteran comedian did James Lipton produce a dozen televised birthday specials?

Bob Hope's twelve birthday shows made up about half of the TV specials Lipton produced, long before he became an interviewer himself.

Kedakai Turner, James Lipton's wife, modeled as which murder suspect on a Clue board game box?

Miss Scarlet was her role on the cover of one edition of the game. She also worked as a real estate broker and designed an illustrated edition of one of his books.

On which sitcom did James Lipton have a recurring role as prison warden Stefan Gentles?

Arrested Development brought him back as the warden in four separate years, and the show's cast later sat for a group interview on his own stage.

In which 2008 Disney animated film did James Lipton voice the director of a hit TV show?

Bolt cast him as the unnamed director who rigs the special effects so that the show's canine star believes his superpowers are real.

While hosting Inside the Actors Studio, James Lipton held which post at the Studio's graduate drama program?

Dean was his title from the program's founding in 1994, after he brokered the partnership that created it, and he was later named dean emeritus.

Which co-founder of the Actors Studio went on to direct On the Waterfront and East of Eden?

Elia Kazan started the Studio in 1947 as a non-profit workshop, alongside a fellow director and a Broadway producer.

The three founders of the Actors Studio had all belonged to which 1930s New York acting company?

The Group Theatre formed in 1931 and staged Waiting for Lefty, a one-act play that became a theatrical legend.

Which famed acting teacher, born into a Yiddish theatre dynasty, taught James Lipton for two and a half years?

Stella Adler also taught Warren Beatty and Robert De Niro, and Lipton went on to study with two more veterans of her old company.

Which Lower Manhattan campus became the home of Inside the Actors Studio tapings in 2005?

Pace University hosted the show at its Schimmel Center for the Arts, facing City Hall, on a new set with a gritty backstage feel.

With which Greenwich Village university did the Actors Studio first run its graduate drama program?

The New School partnership lasted from 1994 until the contract lapsed in 2005, and the earliest shows were taped in its Tishman Auditorium.

Which arts-focused channel aired the 23rd and final season of Inside the Actors Studio in 2019?

Ovation acquired the rights to every earlier season as well, and with the founding host retired it gave each episode a different celebrity interviewer.

Which Cheers star was the guest on James Lipton's last episode as host of Inside the Actors Studio?

Ted Danson's interview aired in January 2018, and that September Lipton said he was stepping down after more than 24 years.

Which actress turned down Inside the Actors Studio in 2013, saying she was too young and inexperienced?

Jennifer Lawrence said no in the year she won the Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook at the age of 22.

Which Family Guy cast member missed the cast's Inside the Actors Studio episode over a scheduling conflict?

Mila Kunis, the voice of Meg Griffin, was unavailable, so creator Seth MacFarlane appeared with three castmates instead.

Which Broadway producer of Brigadoon co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947 alongside two directors?

Cheryl Crawford had quit an earlier theatre company in 1937 to become an independent producer, a decade before she helped start the Studio.

Which pastime did James Lipton take up in 1980, when he was in his fifties?

Flying planes was a late passion: he learned in Cessnas at Van Nuys Airport and was certified for single-engine aircraft.