James Lipton Used To Be a Pimp

Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton reveals in a new interview with Parade.com that he spent a year of his life as a pimp. The 86-year-old was having trouble finding work in Paris in the 1950s after the war when a friend approached him with an interesting business proposition.

Lipton tells the website, "Men couldn't get jobs, and in the male chauvinist Paris of that time, the women couldn't get work at all. It was perfectly respectable for them to go into le milieu." James says that he made friends with a prostitute and the two of them went into business together. He explains, "When I ran out of money, I said, 'I have to go home.' She said, 'No, you don't. I'll arrange for you.' So she arranged for me to do it. I had to be okayed by the underworld, otherwise they would've found me floating in the Seine."

James says he no longer supports paying for sex because "if you can't earn it on your own, then you don't deserve it."

The 250th episode of Inside the Actors Studio aired on Wednesday (May 29th.)