Common Answers to Inside the Actors Studio Questions

Vimeo / ScreenWerks
Vimeo / ScreenWerks / Vimeo / ScreenWerks
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On the TV show Inside the Actors Studio, host James Lipton asks each guest a series of ten questions. The questions are:

1. What is your favorite word? 2. What is your least favorite word? 3. What turns you on? 4. What turns you off? 5. What sound or noise do you love? 6. What sound or noise do you hate? 7. What is your favorite curse word? 8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? 9. What profession would you not like to do? 10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

Lipton's questionnaire is based in part on the Proust Questionnaire, in which Marcel Proust answered a similar set of questions (note that Proust did not devise the questions; he's simply a famous answerer of them).

So the result of Lipton's questionnaire, given over 250 episodes (!), is a lot of repetition. For instance, if you ask a parent for his or her "favorite sound," you're likely to hear a common answer. In 2012, editor Jordan Laws went through a bunch of Actors Studio responses and made this supercut, showing the amount of repetition in actors' responses. Enjoy, and be ready for the bleeped responses to #7: