12 Emmy Awards in as many years is not a bad track record. Many of you are no doubt aware of Inside The Actors Studio, a series of hour-long interviews with some of the stage and screen’s finest actors.
Host James Lipton’s formulaic, well-researched interviews are always highly informative. Set before an audience of university Drama/Theatre students, these interviews both touch the surface of the human behind the superstar and delve into the very soul of the actor at the same time.
What I have always found most interesting about Inside The Actors Studio is that there really is nothing else like it on television. To be able to peek behind the scenes and hear how accomplished actors operate, how they prepare for and shape their roles, how they manipulate their craft, is fascinating.
In an age where our senior students prefer video before text, a biography from Wikipedia on Al Pacino just ain’t gonna cut it anymore. Enter Inside The Actors Studio on DVD! The acclaimed Bravo TV show is now slowly being rollled out on video and is perfect for showing in a senior Drama/Theatre class for students who have a thirst to know more about acting (prepare a question sheet on a handout and it also serves as a perfect lesson for when you may be absent from the classroom, too).
The quicker our students appreciate how much they can learn from the masters of acting, the better. Now, Inside The Actors Studio offers Drama/Theatre teachers the opportunity to bring it all into the classroom. A small selection of episodes are now available on DVD and come highly recommended.
Probably the best release so far for a young audience is Leading Men: Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Russell Crowe.