Some of David Blaine’s most famous endurance stunts - from burying himself alive for a week to standing on a huge block of ice for nearly three days - have taken him to the edge of this world and the next. It’s there, he says, that he feels closest to his mother, who died when he was a teenager.  

Blaine has taken street magic and redefined it over a career that has lasted more than 25 years. He’s pushed his body to the limits of human endurance and almost died performing some of the most dangerous illusions in the canon of magic. 

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He’s also donated millions and raised money by performing for charities close to his heart like the Salvation Army which clothed him when he was a boy. Throughout his career, David Blaine has also quietly volunteered to lift morale by performing his tricks in hospitals. 

Despite being an international, headline-grabbing showman, David Blaine has cultivated a modest, almost low-key, quiet persona. He’s a magician whose actions speak louder than his words. What makes this enigmatic, Brooklyn-born magician tick?

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David Blaine: street performer and superhero

 Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1973, David’s father was a traumatized Vietnam War veteran who didn’t stay around for long, leaving his mother, Patrice, to raise him alone. A sympathetic librarian recommended David read a book on card tricks which sparked an interest that changed his life. He learned one trick and showed it to his mother. 

“When I did it for the first time for my mom, she went crazy,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I got addicted to the reaction. It’s simple - you’re making your mom thrilled. She loved it. Then I did it for her friends and they’re loving it… My mom was so proud." 

Particularly close to his mother, David was eager to make her life better.

When he was nine, she remarried a bank manager, and the family moved to suburban New Jersey. Soon afterward, Blaine attended a magic camp.

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How David Blaine processes pain

By his mid-teens, David was performing at nightclubs and parties. His career was just taking off when Patrice was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At first, the disease progressed slowly, so Blaine continued working. He’d moved to New York and started to break through. 

Then, in 1994, he returned from a three-month trip to France where he’d been performing at the private parties. His mother’s condition had seriously deteriorated. In his autobiography, Mysterious Stranger, he writes that he spent the last weeks of her life with her, holding her in his arms.  

"It was hard for me to fathom that she was dying. By the end, she could hardly even speak. Her illness became the central focus of my life,” he said. "Even though she was too weak to talk, she kept clinging to life. It wasn't until a few days later when I read through her journals that I found out why… She had written that her big worry was that after she had gone, I'd be alone in the world."

His later stunts, he wrote, have been his way of processing and understanding those weeks. 

"In many ways, I endured a week buried underground as a tribute to her since she had endured so much above ground before she died,” he once said. "I guess I am trying to put myself in a position where I could understand what she went through."

Blaine's TV stardom

At the time of his mother’s death in 1994, Blaine was becoming better known in the industry and had befriended many celebrities. Inevitably, TV came calling. In 1997, Street Magic aired on ABC and around the world, followed by Magic Man. 

In both shows, Blaine used handheld cameras and performed street magic tricks on astonished pedestrians. His ultra-cool, low-key manner combined with the amazed reaction of spectators made compelling viewing. 

Soon he was on late-night talk shows performing for a much larger audience. Conan O’Brien referred to David Blaine as 'The Tiger Woods of Magic'. 

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David Blaine’s stunts

And then came the stunts. 

 “I was buried alive in New York City in a coffin… in April 1999, for a week,” he said in a TED talk. “I lived there with nothing but water. And it ended up being so much fun that I decided I could pursue doing more of these things.”

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Blaine's endurance events

The following year, he froze himself in a block of ice for three days and three nights, again in New York. 

“That one was way more difficult than I had expected. After that, I stood on top of a 100-foot pillar for 36 hours. I began to hallucinate so hard that the buildings that were behind me started to look like big animal heads.”

For his fourth big endurance event in 2003, he went to London and suspended himself in a plexiglass box above the Thames River for 44 days, surviving on water.

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Suspended above The Thames

“It was, for me, one of the most difficult things I'd ever done, but it was also the most beautiful. There were so many skeptics, especially the press in London, that they started flying cheeseburgers on helicopters around my box to tempt me.”

He received huge amounts of media attention and was, by now, world famous. At the end of his fast, he was analyzed by doctors, “so I felt very validated when the New England Journal of Medicine actually used the research for science”.

He’s since been downed, suspended, electrocuted, floated on helium balloons, and shot in the head. In 2017 he made headlines worldwide when his attempt to catch a bullet in his mouth went wrong. His mouthguard shattered, lacerating his throat. He’s never performed the trick again. 
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Giving back

Throughout his career, Blaine has always given back. In November 2006 he became a human gyroscope for 52 hours above New York's Times Square to raise money for the Salvation Army. 

In 2010, Blaine performed ‘Magic for Haiti’ for 72 hours, raising $100,000 for Haiti earthquake relief. Blaine also donated two $1m Tesla Coils to the Liberty Science Center after performing an electricity stunt. 

Since the age of 18, he’s performed for free in hospitals, often for sick children. That didn’t stop during the Covid pandemic. He went online, via FaceTime, to entertain patients, first responders and medics. 

“I tell [hospital personnel] to call me whenever it works for them and I’ll make the time,” he told The New York Post. He often asks his virtual audience to have a deck of cards to hand and performs one-on-one tricks. 

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David Blaine, happy at last? ‍

While his career has often been based on startling people with dangerous stunts, during the pandemic his goal was to provide light relief and inspire calm - particularly among first responders and medical staff.

“They’re out there getting exposed to a virus that can put them and their relatives seriously at risk,” he said. “My goal is to give them a distraction and a few seconds of laughter.” 

“The greatest satisfaction as a magician is bringing joy to people who can really use it. I’m so happy to do anything to show that I appreciate what they are all doing and going through.”

Blaine has pushed his body to the limits. His endurance stunts have entertained millions, as has his street magic. And, by going ‘on call’ during the pandemic to provide light relief to patients and stressed-out medics, he’s adapted his talents to a unique situation. He reinvented himself as a pandemic magician, another twist in the life of a most unusual magic superhero.