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James Lipton (born September 19, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American writer, poet, and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School in New York City. He is also the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series, Inside the Actors Studio, taped at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University in New York City. Most recently, James has starred in a number of humorous television commercials for DC Shoes. These ads parody his own show. His father is Lawrence Lipton, the beatnik writer.

He started his career as a writer for the soap operas Another World, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light and Capitol, as well as acting for over ten years on Guiding Light.

Lipton was the book writer and lyricist for the 1967 Broadway musical Sherry! based on the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play The Man Who Came to Dinner. The score and orchestrations were lost for over 30 years, and the original cast was never recorded. In 2003 a studio cast recording (with Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune, Michael Myers, and others) renewed interest in the show.

James Lipton also occasionally appears in comedy sketches on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. One of his appearances featured a sketch in which he performed a dramatic recitation of the lyrics from the song "PopoZão" from Kevin Federline's yet-to-be released album, and on St. Patrick's Day he shotgunned a can of beer in celebration of Spring break. He has also played an acting-obsessed prison warden on several episodes of the sitcom Arrested Development.

His book of terms of venery, An Exaltation of Larks, was published in 1968. He married Nina Foch in 1954; the two divorced in 1959. In 1970, he married Kedakai Turner, a former model and now a Vice-President of the Corcoran Real Estate Group, who has created illustrations for some of his books.

Parodies

James Lipton, as the host of Inside the Actor's Studio, has been parodied on various sketch comedy shows, the first being Mr. Show in a portrayal by David Cross. The scenes showed Lipton washing guests' feet and overreacting to the performances of spoiled, dimwitted celebrities. Cross was even more direct and scathing about Lipton during a bit in his standup act during the mid-1990s. According to DVD commentaries, this caused awkward moments when Lipton guest-starred on Arrested Development, a series in which Cross starred, and the two were pitted opposite each other in several scenes.

Will Ferrell portrayed Lipton in a series of Saturday Night Live sketches, exaggerating his quiet intensity and obsequious style of interviewing famous actors. Most of the "actors" interviewed by Ferrell's Lipton are "Z" list celebrities (portrayed by an SNL regular or a guest host) who are humorously, excessively praised for the most banal film or television performances. Some of these interviewees include Dustin Diamond of Saved by the Bell and Charles Nelson Reilly, played by Tobey Maguire and Alec Baldwin respectively.

On Chappelle's Show, it was parodied as Inside the Chappelle Studio. Lipton was also parodied on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where show host Michael J. Nelson lost his mind and believed he was Lipton hosting Inside the Actors Studio. He asked a series of inane interview questions to Crow T. Robot, mistaking him for Ray Liotta.

See also

• Bernard Pivot

External links

• BRAVO cast biography
• Paris Premiere The french TV Chanel that broadcast Inside the Actors Studio

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