David Copperfield (illusionist) with Photos and Videos

David Seth Kotkin (born September 16, 1956), known professionally as David Copperfield, is an American magician, described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history.

Copperfield's television specials have won 21 Emmy Awards of a total 38 nominations. Best known for his combination of storytelling and illusion, Copperfield's career of over 40 years has earned him 11 Guinness World Records, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a knighthood by the French government, and he has been named a Living Legend by the US Library of Congress.

Copperfield has so far sold 33 million tickets and grossed over $4 billion, more than any other solo entertainer in history. In 2015, Forbes listed his earnings at $63 million for the previous 12 months and ranked him the 20th highest-earning celebrity in the world.

When not performing, he manages his chain of eleven resort islands in the Bahamas, which he calls "Musha Cay and the Islands of Copperfield Bay".

Copperfield was born David Seth Kotkin in Metuchen, New Jersey, the son of Jewish parents, Rebecca, an insurance adjuster, and Hyman Kotkin, who owned and operated a men's haberdashery in Warren, New Jersey, called Korby's. Copperfield's mother was born in Jerusalem while his paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from USSR (present-day Ukraine). In 1974, Copperfield graduated from Metuchen High School.

When Copperfield was 10, he began practicing magic as "Davino the Boy Magician" in his neighborhood, and at age 12, he became the youngest person admitted to the Society of American Magicians. Shy and a loner, the young Copperfield saw magic as a way to fit in and, later, to meet women. As a child, Copperfield attended Camp Harmony, a day camp in nearby Warren, New Jersey, where he began practicing magic and ventriloquism, an experience to which he credits his creative style. "At Camp Harmony, we spent two weeks searching for a guide who'd been kidnapped by Indians. It was just a game, but I was living it. My whole life goes back to that camp experience when I was three or four." As a teenager, Copperfield became fascinated with Broadway and frequently sneaked into shows, especially musicals featuring the work of Stephen Sondheim or Bob Fosse. By age 16, he was teaching a course in magic at New York University.

At age 18, Copperfield enrolled at New York City's Jesuit-based Fordham University, but three weeks into his freshman year he left to play the lead role in the musical The Magic Man in Chicago. It was on this occasion that he adopted the stage name "David Copperfield", taken from the famous Charles Dickens novel because he liked the sound of it. Copperfield sang, danced and created most of the original illusions used in the show. The Magic Man became the longest-running musical in Chicago's history.

At age 19, he headlined and created the first "Magic of David Copperfield" at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii with the help of Audio/Lighting Designer Willy Martin for several months.

Copperfield's career in television began in earnest when he was discovered by Joseph Cates, a producer of Broadway shows and television specials. Cates produced a magic special in 1977 for ABC called The Magic of ABC, hosted by Copperfield, as well as several The Magic of David Copperfield specials on CBS between 1978 and 2001. There have been 18 Copperfield TV specials and 2 documentaries between September 7, 1977, and April 3, 2001.

Copperfield also played the character The Magician in the 1980 horror film Terror Train and had an uncredited appearance in the 1994 film Prêt-à-Porter. Most of his media appearances have been through television specials and guest spots on television programs. His illusions have included the disappearance of a Learjet (1981), the vanishing and reappearance of the Statue of Liberty (1983), levitating over the Grand Canyon (1984), walking through the Great Wall of China (1986), escaping from Alcatraz prison (1987), the disappearance of an Orient Express dining car (1991) and flying on stage for several minutes (1992).

One of his most famous illusions occurred on television on April 8, 1983: A live audience of 20 tourists was seated in front of a giant curtain attached to two lateral scaffoldings built on Liberty Island in an enclosed viewing area. Copperfield, with help from Jim Steinmeyer and Don Wayne, raised the curtain before lowering it again a few seconds later to reveal that the space where the Statue of Liberty once stood was empty. A helicopter hovered overhead to give an aerial view of the illusion and the statue appeared to have vanished, with only the circle of lights surrounding it still present and visible. Before making the statue reappear, Copperfield explained in front of the camera why he wanted to perform this illusion. He wanted people to imagine what it would be like if there were no liberty or freedom in the world today and what the world would be like without the freedoms and rights we enjoy. Copperfield then brought the statue back, ending the illusion by saying that "our ancestors couldn't (enjoy rights and freedoms), we can and our children will". Both the disappearance and the reappearance of the statue were filmed in long take to demonstrate the absence of camera tricks.

In 1996, in collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, David Ives, and Eiko Ishioka, Copperfield's Broadway show Dreams and Nightmares broke box office records in New York at the Martin Beck Theatre. Reviewer Greg Evans described the sold-out show in Variety magazine: "With a likable, self-effacing demeanor that rarely comes across in his TV specials, Copperfield leads the audience through nearly two hours of truly mind-boggling illusions. He disappears and reappears, gets cut in half, makes audience members vanish and others levitate. Copperfield climaxes his show with a flying routine, seven years in the making, that defies both logic and visual evidence, he could probably retire just by selling his secrets to future productions of Peter Pan".

Also in 1996, Copperfield joined forces with Dean Koontz, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury and others for David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible, an anthology of original fiction set in the world of magic and illusion. A second volume, David Copperfield's Beyond Imagination, was published in 1997. In addition to the two books, Copperfield wrote an essay as part of NPR's "This I Believe" series and This I Believe, Inc.

In May 2001, Copperfield entertained guests at a White House benefit for UNICEF by performing an illusion in which he sawed singer and actress Jennifer Lopez into six pieces. This illusion was an update of one he performed in one of his early TV specials on actress Catherine Bach.

In 2002, he was the subject of an hour-long biographical special on AandE's "Biography" channel.

On April 5, 2009, Copperfield made his first live TV appearance for some time when he entertained the audience at the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards with two illusions. First, he made singer Taylor Swift appear inside an apparently empty translucent-sided elevator as it was lowered from the ceiling; he then sawed her in half in his Clearly Impossible illusion.

On May 7, 2009, Copperfield was dropped by Michael Jackson from Jackson's residency at the O2 Arena after a disagreement over money. Copperfield wanted $1 million (£666,000) per show. Copperfield denied the reports of a falling-out, saying "don't believe everything you read." News of Copperfield's collaboration with Jackson first surfaced on April 1, 2009, and has since been described as a possible April Fool's prank.

In August 2009, Copperfield took his show to Australia.

In January 2011 Copperfield joined the cast of the feature film Burt Wonderstone with Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, James Gandolfini and Olivia Wilde. Copperfield and his team developed illusions used in the film. He also coached Carell and Wilde on how to perform the 'Impossible Sawing' illusion, in which Wilde's character is sawed in half and her halves separated without the use of any covering or camera tricks.

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