FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Maniac-9 Inside the Actors Studio is a show that airs on Bravo and hosted by James Lipton. It's a TV show but is also used as a teaching class for prospective actors and directors learning their craft at Pace University in New York City.The show gives you a far more in-depth interview with famous actors/actresses about their careers from start to present day and what lead them to be where they are today. This isn't your pre-interviewed talk show interviews with actors where they're just using it to promote their most recent project and then also some trivial funny thing that happened in their day to fill time. You can really get in the head of the actors and see what their motivations for a particular role were.At the end of the show the actors get to take questions from the audience of students and in a way become a teacher to them.

MisterWhiplash James Lipton would be really just a good Film and acting professor at the New School in New York City (it may be a different school now) if not for his show Inside the Actors Studio, where he brings on a different big name actor (and occasionally the infamous director, comedian, or even TV show cast or musician) and interviews them about the process. It ends then with his 'questions', which usually bring out hilarious responses, then leading to the students asking questions.It's hard sometimes to watch the show to not think of Will Ferrel's dead-on imitation of Lipton from SNL; there is something to Lipton that is full-of-himself, that he's so honored to be interviewing these highly revered celebrities and actors about their craft. Sometimes this is a worthy place to be that he's in; interviews with Robert De Niro, Meryl Street, Martin Scorsese, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spiebgerg are very worthwhile to hear from. But sometimes the questions asked by the students themselves end up having some more worth, as they're the ones who will want to know more for their lives than Lipton; also, some of the interviewees are either still on their way in their careers, or make you scratch you head thinking 'why is HE on the show'? But for the most part, it is a consistently interesting program past the overly serious and sad points, and for film buffs it is always of some fascination to hear their favorites speak about the craft and the process and the actors they work with. Sometimes it is a little too full of bull, but then that is countered with the funnier guests (people like George Carlin and the cast of the Simpsons have appeared).

T Y I have known actors and I dislike them for so many reasons. When done well, there's no denying acting IS a skill. But too many people think they should be actors, mainly because they see it as a lifestyle and a way to be the center of attention, not a job - laziness & privilege are what appeal to them. Most actors cannot stop acting, and they are constantly attempting to shine attention on themselves. This plays out on the show as actors "method-act" their answers. The actors I've known are needy, awful, empty-headed people. These qualities are enervating. This is the TV show that confirms the truth of every unflattering cliché about actors AND liberals and makes everyone else do a slow-boil. When they answer Lipton's limp questions, actors reveal the self-impressed minutia & trivial crap that their minds are pre-occupied with; the things that have stunted their growth.There are no more unkind words to waste on the hideously self-impressed and fawning sycophant James Lipton. The dynamic he provides is revolting.The coda of each episode is a grotesque display of touchy-retchy posturing and self-disclosure: "Hello my name is Sierra, I'm the product of my parents most delirious self-indulgent baby-boomer dreams. I'm a 2nd year acting student, and I haven't thought deeply about anything but myself for over a decade...." (Although this sounds like a conservative rant, I'm a liberal)

quixoboy I admit that I am a fairly frequent viewer of this show. Whenever I know that it's on, I often wish to go right to it immediately and find out what established actor/screenwriter/director is being interviewed...and then, of course, it got to a point where a lot of the guests didn't seem all that "established" to me. I'm sorry, but Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore, Will Smith, Sarah Jessica Parker, Melanie Griffith, Mike Myers, the voice cast of "The Simpsons"...for all of their collective accomplishments, they do not exactly strike me as the ideal choices for guests on a show that prides itself on getting the most out of legends like Spielberg, Streep, De Niro, Ford, etc. Moreover, it pained me to see episodes like ones featuring Robin Williams or "The Simpsons" cast - episodes that seemed less like informative, compelling interviews and more like bloated, tedious showcases for the guest(s)'s comedic flair, and/or versatility with voices and characters. The "Simpsons" episode in particular...I don't think I'll take this show so seriously again, after watching that disappointment. I don't know about you, but when host James Lipton starts repeatedly asking guests to answer his questions in a certain voice or character, it sort of kills the show's once-high level of credibility. Now, it's just a train wreck in the works...slowly winding down into a disastrous, unwatchable wasteland of "Talk TV".