James Lipton is not just an actor. He is also a respected host, a shrewd writer, an accomplished pilot, and is the Dean Emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at the Pace University in New York City. But beyond his dignified position and impressive record lies a somewhat shocking past. He was a pimp.

In an interview with Parade, the "Insider the Actors Studio" host admitted that he used to pimp prostitutes when he was younger.

"I was," he told the magazine when asked if it is true that he was a pimp in Paris, France in the 1950s.

"It was only a few years after the war. Paris was different then, still poor. 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.

"Young women desperately needed money for various reasons. They were beautiful and young and extraordinary. There was no opprobrium because it was completely regulated. Every week they had to be inspected medically. The great bordellos were still flourishing in those days before the sheriff of Paris, a woman, closed them down. It was a different time."

The 86-year-old American actor, who is a recipient of the French Republic's Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, recalled how he got into the profession, saying he became friends with a prostitute in Paris.

"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."

He didn't just represent his friend, but a "whole bordello" of other girls. He was also so good at his job that his business was booming.

"I did a roaring business, and I was able to live for a year. The French mecs didn't exploit women. They represented them, like agents. And they took a cut. That's how I lived. I was going through my rites of passage, no question about it."

"It was a great year of my life."

Despite representing women who sell sex during his younger days, Lipton still doesn't think that people should pay for sex.

"I really don't. I think if you can't earn it on your own, then you don't deserve it."