Actors Studio

The Tiffany Theaters are being resurrected, at least briefly. The twin 99-seat Sunset Strip theaters closed in 2002 because the building that houses them was to be demolished as part of a mixed-use real estate development. That's still the plan, but the wrecking ball isn't expected until next year. So the developer of the proposed Sunset Millennium project, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, is donating the use of the Tiffany spaces to the Actors Studio for at least the rest of 2004.

Tina Fey brought back her uncanny Sarah Palin impression during an appearance on Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio" this week. The "Admission" star was prompted by host James Lipton to answer questions in character, a recurring segment of his, which winks back at her impressions from the 2008 presidential campaign that were comic gold. We have Fey's "SNL" and improv background to thank for her glorious resurrection of the former Alaska governor. Fey definitely separated the mavericks from the "not mavericks," that's for sure.

Perhaps "sycophancy" is the wrong word for it. Yet what's amazing about James Lipton, the host of Bravo's interview series "Inside the Actors Studio," is that he puckers up for celebrities while maintaining a magisterial, professorial tone calculated to chill the blood of undergraduates. He's like "SCTV's" Sammy Maudlin, a hammy Vegas talk-show host, crossed with John Houseman in "The Paper Chase."

Customized TV Listings are available here: www.latimes.com/tvtimes Click here to download TV listings for the week of March 17 - 23, 2013 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     SERIES Splash Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, comic Louie Anderson, reality star Kendra Wilkinson are among the stars competing on this new celebrity diving competition. 8 p.m. ABC Pretty Little Liars The teen-themed drama ends another season, followed by a sneak peak at the pilot episode of the summer series "Twisted.

Ethan Hawke deliberately cruises the aisles of the Tishman Auditorium in his suede jacket and goatee as 500 eager audience members, George Plimpton among them, take their seats. Tonight this New School theater is more than a seminar classroom for its School of Dramatic Arts. Young professionals, suburbanites, small-time celebrities and mega-stars alike have come out to see what the publicity-shy Jessica Lange has to say for herself.

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.

Sunday Super Bowl XXXI / 3 p.m. Fox The Pack is finally back in the big game. For the first time since 1968, when legendary Vince Lombardi led them to victory, the Green Bay Packers have a chance at an NFL championship against the New England Patriots, who lost in their sole 1986 appearance against the Chicago Bears. It is the first Super Bowl for Fox, which has assigned Pat Summerall and John Madden to cover the action from the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

David Groh, an actor best known for his role on the 1970s TV sitcom "Rhoda" as the title character's husband, died of kidney cancer Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 68. Groh became an instant celebrity in 1974 when he starred as the easygoing Joe Gerard opposite Valerie Harper's neurotic Rhoda Morgenstern on the "Mary Tyler Moore" spinoff. But by the third season the couple divorced and he was off the show.

New York's famed Actors Studio is looking for a new artistic director after months of turmoil, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Actress Ellyn Burstyn, appointed artistic co-director with actor Al Pacino in September, 1982, is stepping aside because she is too busy to concentrate on revamping the school founded in 1947 by the late Lee Strasberg. Pacino resigned in 1984. "We were falling behind instead of being on the cutting edge," said actor Paul Newman, president of the school.

Jean Luc-Godard's long-rumored (and doubtless, highly non-traditional) "King Lear" for Cannon is coming closer to reality. The French director shot a scene for the film in NYC recently with Woody Allen, who, according to a source familiar with the project, plays a film editor in a film within the film.

R.G. Armstrong Actor a favorite of Peckinpah R.G. Armstrong, 95, a veteran character actor who started his career in the 1950s on Broadway, segued to television, then solidified his standing as a favorite of filmmakers Sam Peckinpah and Warren Beatty, died Friday at his home in Studio City of natural causes, said his daughter Daryl Armstrong. Robert Golden Armstrong was born April 7, 1917, in Birmingham, Ala., and graduated from the University of North Carolina. After college he studied at the Actors Studio in New York and was cast in Elia Kazan's original 1955 Broadway staging of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The old notion that British actors work from the outside-in while American actors work from the inside-out has been rendered obsolete by the movies (which have encouraged even plummy English veterans to sweat and stammer like Actors Studio die-hards) and actor training (which has come to recognize that emotional revelation without reliable technique is, well, kind of embarrassing). But this year's Tony nominees for lead actor in a play suggest that there may still be some truth to the clichés about the Anglo-American theatrical divide.

"Survivor" host Jeff Probst has purchased the Gene Autry estate in Studio City for $5 million. Built in 1949 by the cowboy singer-actor, the forested 3.68-acre property had been donated by Autry's widow, Jacqueline Autry, to the Autry National Center of the American West. The two-story Monterey-style house of about 8,000 square feet has pegged hardwood floors, a family room with a wet bar, a library/media room with vintage walnut paneling, a breakfast room, five bedrooms and seven bathrooms.

Canadian actor Maury Chaykin, who was perhaps best known in the United States for his startling cameo in "Dances With Wolves" and who more recently spoofed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on HBO's "Entourage," died on Tuesday, his 61st birthday. Chaykin died at a Toronto hospital, said his manager, Paul Hemrend. The actor had been battling kidney problems, said Mark McKinney, who produced Chaykin's most recent series, the HBO Canada sitcom "Less Than Kind." "He was one of our greatest actors," McKinney said.

If it hadn't been for a girlfriend's mother, Mike Nichols might never have become one of the few artists to earn Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy awards — much less the 38th recipient of the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, which is being presented Thursday night at a gala ceremony at Sony Studios. The teenage Nichols and his then-girlfriend Lucy were given tickets by her mother to see a new play on Broadway: Tennessee Williams' seminal 1947 drama "A Streetcar Named Desire," starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan.

SERIES Inside the Actors Studio: Director James Cameron ("Avatar") is James Lipton's guest in this new episode (7 p.m. Bravo). How I Met Your Mother: The gang tries to convince Ted (Josh Radnor) that Tiffany (Carrie Underwood) is stringing him along. Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris also star in this new episode (8 p.m. CBS). The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love: Jake's family meets the two finalists before Jake makes his final decision in the season finale (8 p.m. ABC)

Elia Kazan was one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century, directing such classics as 1951's "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1954's "On the Waterfront" and 1955's "East of Eden." He won three Oscars, five Tony Awards and four Golden Globes. Actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, Terry Moore and Andy Griffith blossomed under his direction. The actors who worked with him adored -- and still adore -- him. But not everybody adores him, because of his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952, when he informed on eight of his friends from his Group Theatre days in the 1930s who, like him, had once belonged to the Communist Party.

Since its inception 48 years ago, the Actors Studio has admitted only 800 members, including Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Stephen Sondheim, Dustin Hoffman and Martin Landau. More than 150 of those members have won the Tony, the Oscar or the Emmy. But what actually goes on behind the closed doors of the Studio has always been private. Until now. "Inside the Actors Studio," a new series premiering Wednesday on Bravo, flings open the portals of the legendary workshops.

Elia Kazan was one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century, directing such classics as 1951's "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1954's "On the Waterfront" and 1955's "East of Eden." He won three Oscars, five Tony Awards and four Golden Globes. Actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, Terry Moore and Andy Griffith blossomed under his direction. The actors who worked with him adored -- and still adore -- him. But not everybody adores him, because of his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952, when he informed on eight of his friends from his Group Theatre days in the 1930s who, like him, had once belonged to the Communist Party.

Townes Van Zandt, the tortured Texas troubadour who drank himself into an early grave, had a sad, sly song called "No Deal" in which a used-car salesman hands him the keys to a sedan with no engine and then explains: "You don't need no engine to go downhill, and I could plainly see that's the direction you're headed." The lyric drew a hearty laugh from Jeff Bridges, the actor who is getting perhaps the best reviews of his long and illustrious career for "Crazy Heart," which presents him as country singer Bad Blake who, like Van Zandt, is in desperate need of a spiritual handbrake.