David Blaine

Dubbed a modern day Houdini, David Blaine defied not only death, but easy categorization, as he moved from performing amazing acts of street magic in front of awestruck crowds, to breaking several world records with his unbelievable feats of endurance. Emerging from the hard-scrabble boroughs of New York City and the celebrity party circuit, Blaine's reputation as an unconventional prestidigitator earned him his first TV special "David Blaine: Street Magic" (ABC, 1997). An instant media sensation, he quickly followed with "David Blaine: Magic Man" (ABC, 1999), which followed him as he astonished bystanders in far-flung locales like Venezuela and Haiti. He took things to a new level with endurance stunts that saw him buried alive under New York's Trump Place in 1999 and later encased in a block of ice in Times Square for the televised special "David Blaine: Frozen in Time" (ABC, 2000). Future endeavors, recorded for posterity on such specials as "David Blaine: Vertigo" (ABC, 2002), "David Blaine: Drowned Alive" (ABC, 2006) and "David Blaine: Dive of Death" (ABC, 2008), began to prompt more questions of "why does he do it?" than of "how does he do it?" Undeterred by skeptics or critics, Blaine continued to push the boundaries of human endurance and the laws of physics, much to the delight of fans who wondered what the illusionist-daredevil would do next.