James Lipton, writer and host of Inside the Actor’s Studio, passed away on March 2, 2020, following a battle with bladder cancer. He was 93 years old.

Lipton was born on September 19, 1936, in Detroit. Following the divorce of his parents when he was a child, his mother struggled financially, leading him to start working at just 13 years old. He gained experience working as a copy boy for the Detroit Times and later as an actor at the Catholic Theater of Detroit. Lipton later briefly served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II before moving to New York in the hope of becoming a lawyer.

By the 1950s, Lipton was appearing in Broadway in plays such as The Autumn Garden and in films like The Big BreakSherry!. Lipton also would write for a number of different soap operas, such as Guiding Light, Another World, and Capitol.

In the early 1990s, Lipton came up with the idea to create an educational program for actors, arranging the Actors Studio to work alongside New York City’s New School University and form the Actors Studio Drama School (later the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, where Lipton served as Dean Emeritus). It was here that Lipton created Inside the Actors Studio, where actors, directors, and others in the film industry would be interviewed by students at the school, with the sessions taped and broadcast for the public. Lipton acted as the show’s host and main interviewer for 24 years, until he retired in September 2018.