This time, Lipton answers

BRIDGEHAMPTON, Long Island -- Regular viewers of "Inside the Actors Studio," now in its 13th year on Bravo, know a few things about James Lipton. He has acted on the soap opera "Guiding Light"; his wife, Kedakai, won't allow him to get a tattoo; he flies planes and rides horses; and he treats the interview process as a sacred art, preparing questions for weeks, whether his guest be Charlie Sheen or Al Pacino.

What you don't know about Lipton could fill a book, as he makes clear in his just-published memoir, "Inside Inside."

On a late-summer afternoon, Lipton was at his Bridgehampton, Long Island, home, an airy barn-like structure surrounded by trees. He described his work schedule when writing the book over the last year, 14-hour workdays that left him unable to spend even 15 minutes sitting on his deck last summer.

In fact, "Inside Inside" makes clear that he hasn't relaxed much at all in the course of a long and varied life, one that rivals any of his guests'. In the book's freewheeling narrative, Lipton reveals his hardscrabble upbringing, his newspaper apprenticeship and his decade-plus of studying acting and dance. He can pirouette, write bestselling books, write lyrics, produce a dozen Bob Hope television specials; he's run away with gypsies and been a pimp in Paris. Also, he's had it out with Barry Manilow and learned Pilates from Joseph Pilates himself.

But it is the show that now defines him, and though he refuses to name any favorite guests, one can glean a few things from the book. Philip Seymour Hoffman receives a couple of lines, but Martin Scorsese is discussed for several pages. And of course his very favorite guest has not yet appeared -- that would be any one of his own former students.

"I wouldn't be able to begin for 15 minutes. I would be like a fool, in tears," he said about the possibility. Does he have any likely candidates, graduates who are close to being a star? "We've only graduated 10 years of students, and 10 years is a very short time. But Bradley Cooper is ours, hell of an actor. Sandy Meisner used to say it takes 20 years once you've finished with me before you can really call yourself an actor."

"Inside the Actors Studio" has had more than 200 guests. Yet it happens that the only two actors who define acting for Lipton have not appeared on the show. "[Jack] Nicholson and Marlon [Brando] are the two greatest actors I ever saw."