James Lipton is widely known as the creator, executive-producer, writer and host of Inside the Actors Studio, which is seen in 89 million American homes on Bravo, and around the world in 125 countries. From 1994 to the present, more than 250 actors, directors and writers have joined him in creating what many consider the definitive craft archive of our time.

The television series, which has been recognized with fourteen Emmy nominations in fourteen years, a record for primetime television nominations, is in fact a course in a master's degree program, the renowned Actors Studio Drama School of Pace University (www.Pace.edu/actorsstudiomfa), which was created fifteen years ago by Mr. Lipton as a vice-president of the Actors Studio, in collaboration with his Studio colleagues, and which, with Mr. Lipton as its founding dean, became the largest graduate drama school in America.

Just as each of his distinguished guests brings to Inside the Actors Studio a lifetime of experience to be shared with the school's students, Mr. Lipton brings to the series and the school his experience as actor, director and producer in theater, film and television, choreographer, playwright, lyricist, screenwriter, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and academician.

More than ten years of his life were spent in the classroom as a student of three of the acknowledged masters of the theatrical arts, Stella Adler, Harold Clurman and Robert Lewis. He was trained in modern dance and ballet by Hanya Holm and Alwin Nikolais, and in ballet by Ella Daganova and Benjamin Harkarvy. His voice teachers were Eva Gauthier and Arthur Lessac.

His acting career began on Broadway in "The Autumn Garden" by Lillian Hellman,and extended to a wide variety of roles in film and television.

Bringing all the disciplines in which he was trained to his career as a producer, he has been responsible as writer and executive-producer for some of television's most celebrated specials, among them Jimmy Carter's Inaugural Gala, the first Presidential concert ever televised, and the first television special to originate in the Kennedy Center; 12 Bob Hope Birthday Specials, reaching record-breaking audiences; and The Road to China, the first American entertainment program from the People's Republic, which aired for three hours on NBC.

He was the writer and producer of Mirrors, adapted by him from his novel, which appeared on NBC; and he created the story and teleplay for Copacabana, which was chosen by TV Guide as one of the year's ten best TV films.

On Broadway, Mr. Lipton wrote the book and lyrics of two musicals, Nowhere to Go but Up, and Sherry!, which was based on Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner. In 2005, he revisited Sherry!, producing a cast album for Angel Records, starring Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune and Mike Myers. Also on Broadway, he produced The Mighty Gents, starring Morgan Freeman, and Monteith and Rand, which Dennis Cunningham of WCBS TV called "the comic event of the season."

In addition to his novel Mirrors, which reflected his experience in the world of dance and dancers, he is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction book An Exaltation of Larks, which has been in print since its publication in 1968.

The definitive work on the subject of collective nouns, Mr. Lipton's research, which was as thorough then as it is now, led him to the fifteenth century Middle-English tomes in the library of the British Museum that rendered up the sources of not only the familiar - a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, a host of angels - but such unknown (and proper) terms as an ostentation of peacocks, a murder of crows, a charm of finches, a parliament of owls, a skulk of foxes, a shrewdness of apes - and an exaltation of larks.

Finally, in these same fifteenth century books and manuscripts, Mr. Lipton found the utterly unexpected - a discretion of priests, a rascal of boys, a riffraff of knaves - which inspired his own inventions - a chisel of repairmen, a flush of plumbers, a handful of gynecologists, a lot of realtors, a queue of actors, an unction of undertakers. The result was the more than 1000 terms, real and fanciful, in the book Penguin has declared "a classic," and that prompted Newsweek's book critic to write, "If there were an English Academy, Lipton would surely deserve election."

In 2007, Dutton published Mr. Lipton's book, "Inside Inside," which, as its title indicates, is an account of his life as dean of the Actors Studio Drama School and creator and host of Inside the Actors Studio. In addition to revealing the intimate behind-the-scenes story of the series, Mr. Lipton has, in a manner of speaking, put himself in the guest's chair, and subjected himself to the same kind of no-holds-barred examination his guests have faced, recounting for the first time the events and people who shaped his life, from its beginning to the present moment.

Mr. Lipton's approach to his duties as host of Inside the Actors Studio - the two weeks of preparation, the four hundred blue cards, the focus on craft - has inspired imitation and parody, notably by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live and beyond. That led to Mr. Lipton's role in the film Bewitched, starring Mr. Ferrell and Nicole Kidman, and 32 appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien where Dean Lipton distinguished himself by shotgunning beer to celebrate spring-break week, solemnly reciting K-Fed's rap, and dancing with the horny manatee, which, in turn, has led to increasingly frequent invitations to return to his acting roots, notably in a recurring role on Arrested Development, roles on various television programs, and in the animated films Igor and Bolt.

Viewers of Inside the Actors Studio know that Mr. Lipton is an avid horseman who has won numerous showjumping championships, and that he enjoys nothing more than talking flying with fellow pilots like Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie.

He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Kedakai Turner Lipton, who is a vice-president of the Corcoran Real Estate Group, and who, as the series' viewers know, will not allow him to have a tattoo. He insists that she is in every other respect a remarkable woman.

Mr. Lipton is the Dean Emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School, has received three honorary Ph.D.s, and is a recipient of the French Republic's Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres.