James Lipton at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, September 9, 2017. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/File)
James Lipton, longtime host of “Inside the Actors Studio,” died Monday, his wife said.
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 longtime host was born in 1926, to a father who was a Polish Jewish immigrant. His mother’s parents were Russian Jews.
Lipton interviewed hundreds of master actors and Hollywood luminaries for nearly 25 years on Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio.”
The Detroit-born Lipton was an actor-turned-academic, who became an unlikely talk show host and celebrity when he began the show in 1994 that also served as a class for his students at the Actors Studio, where he was dean.
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His first guest was Paul Newman, and future guests would include Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Glenn Close, Steven Spielberg, and Barbra Streisand.
James Lipton with the Lifetime Achievement Awards from The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ 34th Annual Daytime Creative Arts and Entertainment Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, June 14, 2007. (Kevork Djansezian/AP)
Lipton said his favorite guest on the show was Bradley Cooper, because he was a former student.
“The night that one of my students has achieved so much that he or she comes back and sits down in that chair would be the night that I have waited for since we started this thing,” Lipton told Larry King in 2016. “It turned out to be Bradley Cooper.”
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Lipton and Cooper, who can be seen asking Sean Penn a question in a 1999 episode of the show, both teared up when he returned as a guest in 2011.
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