David Copperfield · Illusionist · Read by a mentalist

David Copperfield, the magician
who turned illusion into cinema

The Statue of Liberty gone, the Great Wall of China walked through, a man flying above a stage for several minutes. Hugo Marceau, French magician and mentalist, on who David Copperfield is, what his greatest illusions actually were, and the one lesson every working performer owes him.

His greatest illusions

Hugo Marceau · magician and mentalist since 2010 · member of the Fédération Française de Magie · rated 5.0 on 178 verified Google reviews · performs in English and French

Who David Copperfield is

No magician has reached the general public the way David Copperfield has. Born David Seth Kotkin on 16 September 1956 in Metuchen, New Jersey, he was performing as "Davino the Boy Magician" at ten, became the youngest member ever admitted to the Society of American Magicians at twelve, and was teaching a magic course at New York University at sixteen. At eighteen he left university after three weeks to play the lead in The Magic Man, a musical in Chicago, and took his stage name from the Dickens novel because he liked the sound of it. From 1978 to 2001 his television specials, The Magic of David Copperfield, made grand illusion a worldwide annual event. Forbes calls him the most commercially successful magician in history.

11Guinness World Records
21Emmy Awards, from 38 nominations
1995first living magician with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
1992premiere of Flying, seven years in the making

Hugo Marceau, French magician and mentalist, on stage — Hugo Marceau · magician and mentalist, France

His greatest illusions

Events, each with a story

1983 · Liberty Island

The Statue of Liberty vanishes

On 8 April 1983, before a live audience of tourists seated on Liberty Island and a helicopter overhead, Copperfield raised a curtain, lowered it, and the statue was gone, with only its ring of lights still showing. He brought it back the same way. Both the vanish and the return were filmed in a single take, and he framed the illusion with a short speech about what a world without liberty would look like. It remains the most famous illusion ever performed on television.

1986 · China

Walking through the Great Wall

Copperfield appeared to pass bodily through the Great Wall of China, with a screen on each side and a silhouette seen entering the stone. Like the statue, the piece worked because of its scale and its setting: a monument everyone knows, treated as a prop. The lesson for any performer is that the audience's familiarity with the object does half the work.

1987 · 1991 · Danger and scale

Alcatraz and the Orient Express

In 1987 he escaped from Alcatraz, in the tradition of Houdini's challenges, and in 1991 he made a dining car of the Orient Express disappear in front of a seated audience. Earlier, in 1981, a Learjet had vanished on an airfield. Each season brought one headline illusion, built with the designers Jim Steinmeyer and Don Wayne, whose names magicians know as well as his.

1992 · The stage

Flying

After seven years of development, Copperfield flew. Not a hanging levitation with a hoop passed once around the body, but minutes of free flight above the stage: turns, loops, a pass through steel hoops, a flight inside a closed glass case, a spectator carried in his arms. Reviewers wrote that he could retire on the method alone. It is still the finale of his show, and the one piece in the profession that magicians speak of as a work of art rather than a trick.

His style

Grand illusion built like a short film

What sets Copperfield apart is not the size of his illusions. Other illusionists have vanished elephants, cars and aeroplanes. It is the dramaturgy. Each piece is written like a short film with a stake, a tension and a resolution, and the emotion is the point: a levitation set to music, an effect built around the memory of a parent, a wish from a child in the audience granted on stage. He understood before television did that the public does not remember a method. It remembers a story.

The second signature is the marriage of spectacle and intimacy. Alongside the vanishing monuments, his most-loved moments are often the smallest: a card trick with a volunteer, a snow effect that fills the theatre, a quiet piece about his grandfather. The Death Saw of 1988, in which he sawed himself in half with a rotary blade as an escape gone wrong, is the exception that proves it: the danger is staged as a story about a man and his mistake, not as a machine.

He also became the profession's archivist. The International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas, which he owns, holds the largest private collection of magic artefacts in the world, from Houdini's apparatus to Robert-Houdin's automata, and he opens it to researchers and fellow magicians. The showman who vanished the Statue of Liberty is also the man who keeps the trade's memory.

Copperfield in numbers

The records behind the legend

Tickets. More than 33 million sold by 2006 and over four billion dollars in gross, more than any other solo entertainer in history according to Forbes, which also ranked him among the twenty highest-earning celebrities in the world in 2015.
Television. Eighteen specials and two documentaries between 1977 and 2001, 38 Emmy nominations and 21 wins.
Honours. Eleven Guinness World Records, the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame given to a living magician (1995), a knighthood from the French government, and the title of Living Legend from the US Library of Congress.
Broadway. Dreams and Nightmares, staged in 1996 with Francis Ford Coppola as creative adviser, broke box-office records at the Martin Beck Theatre.
Today. In residence at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, several shows a week for most of the year, with new illusions still added to the programme.

Not to be confused

The magician and the novel

Search for David Copperfield in Britain and most results are about Charles Dickens. The novel of 1849 follows a boy of the nineteenth century from an unhappy childhood to adulthood; it is Dickens's own favourite among his books. The magician, born David Kotkin, took the name at eighteen for the musical The Magic Man and kept it. There is no connection beyond the sound, and the illusionist has said he chose it for exactly that reason.

If you were looking for the magician, you are in the right place. If you wanted the novel, it is by Charles Dickens and has nothing to do with stage magic.

An opinion from the trade

What a mentalist owes David Copperfield

Hugo Marceau performs no grand illusion. No statue, no wall, no flight above a stage: his terrain is the mind, and his props are a guest's thought, a borrowed object and, in the AI act, an artificial intelligence he built himself. What he keeps from Copperfield is the essential thing: an effect is worth exactly the emotion it carries.

In practice that changes how a performance is designed. Rather than a sequence of tricks, Hugo builds a dramatic progression: a situation the room recognises, a rise in tension, a peak that leaves two hundred people silent. The technique has to stay invisible in the service of the story. That is the standard whether the room is a gala dinner, a conference or a private evening on the French Riviera, and it is the difference between a show people photograph and a show people describe to their colleagues the next morning.

The other inheritance is harder to copy: Copperfield rehearses. Flying took seven years. The Statue of Liberty took a team, a budget and a long take with no second chance. A mentalist has none of the budget and all of the obligation. A thought read wrong in a room of chief executives cannot be re-shot, which is why the dull part, the preparation, is where the work actually is.

If you are planning an event

A show with a story, for your guests

Hugo Marceau performs mentalism and close-up magic for companies and private hosts in France, Switzerland and wherever the event is: a thought read across a dinner table, a prediction locked away before the guests arrived, an AI act for audiences who want the technology to do the magic. Formats and logistics are on the page for event planners; his background is on the about page.

You send the brief. Date, venue, number of guests, the occasion.
A short call within one business day to choose between close-up, the mentalism show and the AI act.
A tailored proposal, travel included, one all-inclusive figure.

Fees on request. Every proposal is tailored to the format, the duration, the audience and the travel involved.

Prefer to talk first? +33 6 88 61 29 00, WhatsApp welcome, English and French.

Questions people ask

David Copperfield, in short

Who is David Copperfield the magician?

David Copperfield, born David Seth Kotkin on 16 September 1956 in Metuchen, New Jersey, is an American illusionist described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history. His television specials ran from 1978 to 2001 and turned grand illusion into a worldwide event. He holds 11 Guinness World Records, has won 21 Emmy Awards and was the first living magician to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

What is David Copperfield's most famous trick?

The vanishing of the Statue of Liberty, performed for television on 8 April 1983 in front of a live audience on Liberty Island, with both the disappearance and the reappearance filmed in a single take. Close behind it: walking through the Great Wall of China (1986), the Alcatraz escape (1987), the Orient Express dining car (1991) and Flying (1992), the stage levitation many magicians consider the finest illusion ever built.

Is the magician related to the Dickens novel?

No. David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens published in 1849. The magician, born David Kotkin, adopted the name as a stage name at eighteen, when he took the lead in the musical The Magic Man in Chicago, simply because he liked the sound of it.

How does David Copperfield fly on stage?

He has never said, and working magicians do not explain each other's illusions. What is public is that Flying took seven years to develop, that it premiered in 1992, that he passes through hoops and inside a glass case during the routine, and that it is still performed in his Las Vegas show. The method is protected; the effect is the reason people still queue for it.

Is David Copperfield still performing?

Yes. He performs in residence at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, several shows a week for most of the year, and continues to develop new illusions. He also owns the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas, the largest private collection of magic artefacts in the world.

What does a mentalist learn from David Copperfield?

That an effect without a story is a demonstration. Copperfield's illusions are built as short films: a stake, a tension, a resolution, an emotion. Hugo performs no grand illusion, his stage is the mind of the audience, but every one of his routines is constructed the same way, with a reason for the room to care before the impossible happens.

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David Copperfield, the magicianwho turned illusion into cinema