David Copperfield and Claudia Schiffer: the romance that never happened. David Copperfield (illusionist) - biography, information, personal life Copperfield and Schiffer in Mallorca
The real name of David Copperfield is Kotkin. He was born in the small American town of Metachen, New Jersey, to a Jewish family.
Mother Rebecca (originally from Jerusalem) is an insurance agent; Father Hyman Kotkin is the owner of a clothing store. Copperfield's grandfather on his father's side was an immigrant from the USSR (now - the territory of Ukraine).
Young David was famous for his phenomenal memory, he memorized the Torah by ear. The card trick that his grandfather showed him, four-year-old David repeated without difficulty. Since then, the boy "fell ill" with tricks, and his parents encouraged his hobby in every possible way. At the age of 7, David successfully demonstrated tricks of his own composition in the local synagogue. And the talented boy became a professional illusionist at the age of 12. It was at this age that he joined the American Society of Magicians, becoming its youngest member. At 16, David teaches students the art of magic at New York University. Since 1974, he has been studying at the same time at Fordham University and playing the main role in the musical "The Magician", which became the most "long-playing" in Chicago. At this time, he took the pseudonym David Copperfield, after the famous hero Dickens (English) Russian. - Before that, he acted under the pseudonym Davino.
Soon David left the university, rented an apartment in New York for a year, looking for a job as an illusionist.
In 1978, Copperfield hosted The Magic of ABC on ABC. In 1979, he played a minor role in the film Terror Train.
Soon David gained wide popularity, and began performing on CBS with the show "The Magic of David Copperfield" (which was broadcast in Russia many years later). During this period, he came up with the idea of creating large-scale illusions, and the first of these was the disappearance of the aircraft. Then David performed the disappearance of the Statue of Liberty, which took place in the presence of the public.
He further staged illusions such as flying over the Grand Canyon, passing through the Great Wall of China, escaping from the famous prison - Alcatraz, traveling to the Bermuda Triangle, escaping from an exploding building, falling from Niagara Falls, the disappearance of the Orient Express car, flight, release from a straitjacket, hanging on burning ropes over burning spikes at a height of about 20 meters, exploring a haunted house and surviving in a pillar of fire.
Most of all, David is famous for his flight, since he was the first to do it, and for a long time no one could solve the secret, which turned out to be very simple: some videos show glare from the beams of searchlights, which sometimes fall on the transparent cables on which David Copperfield hangs.
In collaboration with science fiction writers, he has already published several books. In his house he collected a library on magic. He also has his own museum of props of the great illusionists.
In New York, Copperfield opened a cafe named after himself. There are no waiters. A voice from the darkness asks what the diners will eat, then the ordered materializes on the tables from thin air.
David Copperfield does not flaunt his personal life, but seven of his sensational novels with models have become public.
1) Claudia Schiffer
from 1993 to 1999
As David Copperfield's popularity ratings dwindled, Wendy Leyster, his PR director, suggested a win-win move: the most mysterious man on the planet should have an affair with the most beautiful woman. As a partner, brunette David was the most suitable blonde.
Agents signed a contract with the PR service of supermodel Claudia Schiffer: David will pay the model $250,000 annually if she agrees to play the role of his bride. Claudia, under the contract, was forbidden to appear in public with any other man. But as a bonus to the contract, the model regularly received expensive gifts from David that needed to be featured in the press. Tickets to his shows in different parts of the world and dinners in restaurants, which were peeped by hired paparazzi, David also paid from his own pocket.
Claudia Schiffer and David Copperfield
2) Terry Holladay
from 1999 to 2000
David invited the model to live with her son in his house. But it soon became clear that her interest was purely mercantile. 
Terry Holaday
3) Ambre Friske
from 2000 to 2003
In 2001, Copperfield unexpectedly announced his desire to start a family. Newspapers sniffed out that the new darling of Copperfield was the 22-year-old model from Belgium, Ambre Frisque, with whom he has been dating for five months now.
"I'm trying to make my life a little more balanced," he told People magazine, "I need something to distract me from the reality around me, even when I'm working very hard."
However, in 2003, David and Ambre broke up. 
Ambre Friske
4) Merily Journa
from 2002 to 2004
The Estonian model has lived through several of David's parallel novels. But when he spun with TV presenter Sonia Uribe, she put forward an ultimatum: “Either I, or she!” David chose Sonya, who subsequently left him. 
Merily Journa and David Copperfield
5) Maria Petlichkova
2005, from 2006 to 2008
Czech model Maria Petlichkova gave birth to a boy to David Copperfield. And being already married to someone else. The model confirmed the paternity of the illusionist with a DNA test. David was grateful to Mary that she did not go to court and did not make a fuss in the media.
The model and the illusionist found out the relationship privately, and so tenderly that soon Maria gave birth to a second child - a daughter. David did not consider them his family, but helped financially and visited the children in the mansion he bought for them in Las Vegas for $1.5 million.
6) Lacey Carroll
2007
In 2007, headlines in Western newspapers were full of sensation: "David Copperfield forcefully held a young model on a tropical island, he is accused of rape."
With Lacey Carroll, the former "Miss Washington", he met on the show, ordered to be transplanted to better seats, pulled onto the stage to participate in the illusion, he easily got a phone and an agreement to visit him on the island. After a wonderful weekend, Lacey demanded that David help her with her modeling career. He promised to do everything possible, but as soon as the boat sailed, he erased her number from the phone, and the request from memory.
Without hesitation, Lacey reported the rape to the police. Allegedly insidious seducer David, by deceit lured an innocent girl to the island.
Upon arrival, she was dumbfounded to learn that there were no other guests there, and you could leave it only with the permission of the owner - by boat or small plane. At night, Lacey resisted as best she could, but he beat her and raped her. Lacey, she said, was too shocked by what had happened to undergo a medical examination in the Bahamas, but upon arrival in Seattle immediately contacted the police.
Lawyers quickly figured out that the "innocent" Lacey was not averse to outright prostitution and once accused a man of rape after he refused to pay her $2,000 for sex. But the police could not ignore her statement. A SWAT team turned the Copperfield warehouse in Las Vegas upside down, confiscated money, documents, and computer hard drives. David had to answer humiliating questions, including about Maria and children, paint his intimate life in front of the police.
Lacey Carroll dropped the lawsuit only in April 2010. And this time, David learned his lesson: no more one-time sex, no more simultaneous liaisons. 
Lacey Carroll
7) Chloe Gosselin 
from 2009 to present
Currently, David Copperfield lives in a civil marriage with French model Chloe Gosselin. Together with their daughter, they settled on the illusionist's personal island in the Caribbean.
“For a long time I could not balance my life,” David admits. - Everyone was waiting for the right moment to have children, but he still did not come. It tormented me, I bought some things, traveled, but it boiled inside: is this really all you live for? After meeting Chloe, her accidental pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, I suddenly realized how busy I was with work. Family life on a secluded island turned out to be exactly the outlet that I lacked.
On August 25, one of the most successful, famous and richest supermodels in the world celebrates its 47th birthday. Claudia Schiffer. Today she has everything one can dream of: a successful career, world fame, a huge fortune, a beloved husband and three children. But there are many moments in her past that the supermodel does not like to remember now. For example, about how she periodically became the object of caustic ridicule. Or about what a grand scandal ended her affair with David Copperfield.
The future catwalk star was born in a provincial town near Düsseldorf in a wealthy family of a lawyer and planned to continue her father's work. In her school years, she was an ugly duckling - due to excessive thinness and too high growth, she was not successful with the opposite sex. " Boys don't want to date girls who are taller than them. I felt terribly lonely because I was different from my friends.', she admitted later.
Thanks to the first place at the Physics Olympiad, Claudia got the right to enter the University of Munich without exams, which she was going to do, but then a case intervened in her fate. At a party in a nightclub, the girl was noticed by the director of the French modeling agency Michel Levaton. He invited her to Paris in order to conduct a trial photo shoot. Parents were not enthusiastic about this idea, but still succumbed to persuasion.
Now the supermodel does not like to remember her first photo shoot, because it ended in a complete fiasco: in the photo, the girl's face looked too childish and plump, and her hair was too sparse. As a result, magazines refused her photographs. Only two months later she managed to get a meeting with the casting director of Elle magazine, and he saw in her a future star. After that, her career took off. Two years later, her photographs graced the covers of all glossy magazines, and advertising agencies fought hard for her.
In the 1990s Claudia Schiffer has become one of the most successful, famous and wealthy models in the world. She earned up to 50 thousand dollars a day. After signing a contract with Revlon, Schiffer was officially recognized as the highest paid model in the world. She managed to set a record that no one has been able to surpass so far: her face appeared on the covers more than 900 times, which was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. The French magazine "Paris Match" named her the top model among top models. By the age of 27, Claudia Schiffer was already one of the ten most beautiful women on the planet. Today, her fortune is estimated at $55 million.
Surprisingly, one of the most beautiful and successful supermodels often had to endure ridicule. She would rather never remember her failure in the acting profession. If the podium obeyed her very quickly, then on the set she was never able to achieve any noticeable success. She starred in more than 10 films, but all the directors called her mediocrity. Abel Ferrara, after working with her, issued a disappointing verdict: “ Any goat I met on the road could play this unfortunate scene better than her.».
In his personal life, too, not everything was smooth. Her name never appeared on the pages of the scandalous gossip column until her six-year romance with the illusionist David Copperfield ended in a complete fiasco. Instead of news about the wedding after the engagement announced a few years ago, readers saw a devastating article in Paris Match, where material was published about a contract concluded for 6 years between a supermodel and a magician. All this time, Copperfield, who was losing popularity, allegedly paid Claudia Schiffer a lot of money for her to play the role of his bride in public.
Both Schiffer and Copperfield denied this version and even sued the publication. However, as they say, there is no smoke without fire. The illusionist's spokesman said that the "contract for love" really existed, but over time, the PR novel turned into a real one. Be that as it may, after this scandal, the engagement was canceled and the couple broke up.
In 2000, the supermodel announced that she was going to marry millionaire Tim Jeffries, but this marriage also did not take place for unknown reasons. Claudia Schiffer married only in 2002 - director Matthew Vaughn. The couple had three children, their marriage looked very happy on the outside, until the family moved to England in 2011 - away from persistent rumors in Hollywood that Matthew Vaughn became the father of the child of the actress who starred in his film. The director himself did not comment on these rumors, and the supermodel prefers not to raise this topic in his interviews.
Claudia Schiffer at 45 | Photo: segodnya.ua
Only one supermodel of the 1990s was called her competitor, which still looks just as great:.
American illusionist and hypnotist David Copperfield managed to convince hundreds of thousands of people that magic is real. The eminent hoaxer became popular after the release of his author's TV show on the big screens.
On September 16, 1956, the owner of a clothing store, Hyman Kotkin, and his wife, insurance agent Rebecca (a native of Jerusalem), had a son, who was named David. The Jewish family lived in the city of Metachen, located in the state of New Jersey. From childhood, Copperfield was attracted by everything mystical and mysterious. As the illusionist himself recalls, his grandfather had a great influence on his future, who, in between studying the Torah and memorizing the psalms, entertained his grandson with card tricks.
At the age of 7, the boy, who perfectly mastered the technique of card fraud, performed in front of the parishioners of the local synagogue with a mini-show and received a standing ovation from the audience present at the performance. During his school years, David continued to hone his skills as an illusionist, preferring to develop new tricks and tricks over classes. At the age of 12, the young magician joined the American Society of Magicians, becoming its youngest member.
At the same age, the British television series Joan Craft "The Life of David Copperfield" caught his eye, after watching which the future popular hypnotist decided on a stage name. Few people know, but at the age of 16 Kotkin began teaching the art of magic to students at New York University. Having received a certificate of secondary education, David entered Fordham University, which he never managed to graduate from.
In 1974, an active guy received one of the main roles in the musical "The Magician" and, preferring creative self-realization to a diploma, left the educational institution. In 1978, Copperfield moved from the theater stage to television screens: an ambitious young man hosted the ABC Magic program, in 1979 he played a minor role in the film Terror Train, and in the early eighties he released the author's program The Magic of David Copperfield. During the filming of the series, David decided by all means to realize his long-standing idea with the creation of large-scale illusions.
Tricks and magic
David was assisted in all his stunts by his dedicated team of over 300 people. In the 1990s, when Copperfield was giving 50 performances a month, huge trucks loaded with his props crossed borders with special passes without inspection to keep the illusionist's secrets. As David's popularity grew, the scale of the illusions he showed to the public also increased. In 1983, a magician made the Statue of Liberty disappear for a few minutes.
People who saw this trick assumed that the image on the radar was an imitation, and that the spectators who watched and admired the trick were actors. Copperfield whistleblower from Russia Timur Abdulov explained that the audience is real, and the only montage is an empty pedestal of the Statue of Liberty taken from a helicopter. The rest was achieved by simply turning off the lights around the sculpture. To prevent the statue from being seen, the spotlights on which the curtain was fixed were directed towards the audience present at the show.
In 1984, David's creative biography was replenished with another trick. That year he flew over the Grand Canyon in Arizona. After a test flight, levitation became an integral part of the magician's ideas. It is noteworthy that on stage Copperfield flew through rotating hoops from time to time and flew into a glass cube, indirectly proving that the point is in magic, and not in the ropes on which the illusionist is supposedly suspended.
Nevertheless, skeptics believe that the illusionist is suspended from a special crane using special thin cables with a diameter of less than 1 mm. Such thin cables can withstand up to 100 kg, and they cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Another trick of David Copperfield is the passage through the Great Wall of China (1986). A special tent was set up near the wall, into which the magician entered. On the walls of the tent for spectators outside, movements were projected in the form of shadows, allegedly created by the magician himself until he entered the wall. During the disappearance, David was hiding in a special secret compartment at the bottom of the tent.
When transferring the structure to the other side, the exact same trick with shadows was done. As a result, David, who had been in a specially prepared hiding place all this time, had only to crawl out of the bottom and out of the tent in front of the astonished audience, forcing them to believe in a miracle that had happened.
It is worth noting that not all performances, during which Copperfield played with death, ended successfully. So, in 1984, at the rehearsal of the "Escape from Death" trick, the hypnotist was chained and placed in a container of water. Copperfield got tangled in the chains and choked. The illusionist was pulled out of the water only after 1 minute 20 seconds. In the hospital, it turned out that the artist was not freed from imprisonment due to the fact that he pulled the tendons of his arms and legs.
Personal life
Despite the efforts of the master of disguise not to make his personal life public, crafty journalists always managed to find out the most juicy and scandalous details about the magician's communication with representatives of the weaker half of humanity. At one time, an affair with a blond German fashion model made a lot of noise. The whole world for a couple of years discussed a love story that actually did not exist.
The relationship between Claudia and David began at a time when Copperfield's popularity ratings were in decline. The PR manager of the artist Wendy Leyster, in order to return the client to the front pages of printed publications, signed a contract with the PR service of the supermodel. The essence of the agreement was that Schiffer, for a fee of $250,000, would play the role of Copperfield's bride, and the illusionist, in addition to the annual payment of the agreed amount, would regularly give gifts (jewelry, flowers) to his "beloved" as a bonus, which must also be exhibited for show
The only thing that the charming blonde could not do in these pseudo-relationships was to appear in public with other men. Celebrities began dating in 1993, and in 1997, a copy of the contract was published on the pages of the French magazine Paris Match. David said that the document was fake, and filed a lawsuit against the publication, and the model chose to remain silent. As a result, the romantic fuse of the stars lasted another two years, after which the couple broke up.
For a short time, David met with models Terry Holladay (from 1999 to 2000), Ambre Friske (from 2000 to 2002), Merili Journa (from 2002 to 2004) and Maria Petlichkova (2005).
At the moment, the 60-year-old artist is engaged to designer Chloe Gosselin. Copperfield met a charming Frenchwoman at a fashion show in 2006. In 2011, the chosen one gave birth to David's daughter, whom happy parents named Sky, and in 2012 the family moved from the bustling city to the island owned by the illusionist.
David Copperfield now
In March 2017, David appeared on Bravo TV's Top Chef Masters. As an invited expert, Copperfield assessed the culinary masterpieces prepared by the project participants.
In addition to visiting television shows, film screenings and exhibitions, photos from which the artist posts on Instagram and
- NOW, Mom, you will see my main trick, - a tall, stately man said quietly into the phone, - turn on the first channel and don't be surprised at anything.
Elderly Rebecca, hearing the words "Channel One" through the crackle, turned on the TV. Her son David appeared on the screen in an embrace with the world's most famous top model Claudia Schiffer. The blonde showed 32 dazzling white teeth to the camera, and the young man cast a shy look at her from under a long tar bang.
"We are planning to get married on Christmas, I think it will be so sweet. David already gave me an engagement ring. Look," Claudia extended her hand into the camera lens, "it has a very rare five carat diamond. David paid four for it." over a million dollars. My husband must be generous!"
Dodik, my boy, - Rebecca tragically whispered into the phone, - what does it all mean?
Nothing, - the great magician laughed, - this is my most successful joke. Laugh, mom, and don't take anyone's word: your Dodi will forever remain your little son!
Pseudo marriage contract
FOR THE FIRST TIME David Copperfield saw Claudia Schiffer on his show: while performing in Berlin, he randomly called a girl out of the crowd, and by chance she turned out to be the most successful supermodel with world fame - a rare success! A spark ran between the young, which many call love at first sight, and after a couple of months, David proposed to the girl.
Such an ingenious scenario was born in the head of Wendy Leyster, director of PR and at the same time co-owner of the well-known advertising agency Leyster-Dixon, which develops the image of Copperfield. As soon as his popularity ratings began to decline, the enterprising Wendy suggested a win-win move: the most mysterious man on the planet should have an affair with the most beautiful woman. Especially brunette David is very suitable blonde. The agents signed a contract with the supermodel's PR service: David will pay the model $250,000 a year if she agrees to play the role of his bride. Claudia, under the contract, was forbidden to appear in public with any other man. But as a bonus to the contract, she regularly received gifts from David that needed to be shown in the press. Tickets to his shows in different parts of the world and dinners in restaurants, which were peeped by hired paparazzi, David also paid out of his own pocket: everything is fair.
Dodik's childhood
WHEN Rebecca saw on TV her beloved forty-year-old son, whom she had cherished like the apple of her eye all these years, next to the girl, the woman's heart sank. She assumed that this could happen sooner or later, but ... So many years were given to him alone, and then one appears who will surely take him away. Rebecca knew very well the price of her son's success: having put him on his feet, she still continued to travel with the great magician and magician on every tour, staying in a room next door and every evening wondering how Dodik was doing with his mood and digestion.
Little David Seth Kotkin was born on January 16, 1956. He became the only child in a family of well-bred Jews who moved from Odessa to the American state of New Jersey even before the boy was born. Rebecca, by the way, believed that she and her husband Chaim left musty Odessa for a capitalist paradise solely for the sake of the future of their children.
Dodik - as the future celebrity was affectionately called at home - practically did not make friends with his peers. He grew up a closed and uncommunicative boy, his classmates and despised and feared at the same time. At the same time, all kinds of complexes gave rise to remarkable ambition in him: Dodik knew for sure that he simply had to become famous in any way in order to wipe the noses of all those who so ignored him.
In the meantime, David preferred the company of adults. His mother worked as an insurance agent, and his father kept his own clothing store in New Jersey: they, as wealthy people, had a lot of useful acquaintances, and they often gathered at the Kotkins' house.
When the child was only four years old, one of the guests showed him a simple card trick. David looked serious and concentrated, and then took the deck and repeated all the steps.
"Yes, he's a magician!" - the guests laughed approvingly, and Rebecca patted her son on the cheek: "He is very talented - he can even repeat the rhyme that I read to him only once. An incredibly gifted boy!"
By his sixth birthday, David, with the help of his grandfather, who looked after the child in the absence of his parents, learned seven tricks - with cards, dice and ribbons - and showed them to the parishioners of the synagogue, which the Kotkins went to with the whole family. Rebecca, confident that she was growing up a brilliant child, even hired workers to build a special stage on the lawn for David.
Artificial hare in false cylinder
ONE TIME after school, when all his peers were chasing the ball and competing to see who could throw the disposable lunchbox the farthest, David and his grandfather went for a walk around the town. The old man blindly squinted at the glossy windows of fashionable shops and went into each of them to gawk at various gizmos that had never been seen in Odessa. One of these shops turned out to be the Thonet shop. Outlandish coasters, light bulbs, hats with artificial rabbits, saws, candles, spirals of incomprehensible purpose, knives, clothespins are located in it along all four walls ... The Tonet company specialized in the production of equipment for circus acts. The younger Kotkin spent the whole time there until closing: with mute delight, he touched every thing, imagining how it all worked.
Grandpa,” David asked seriously when they left the store, “can I, when I grow up, be not an insurance agent, like my mother, and not a salesman, like my father, but a magician?”
Grandpa nodded lightly. After that, Dodik hurried home from school every day, not paying attention to the taunts of his classmates: after all, intricate gadgets from the "Young Illusionist's Set", three decks of tattered cards, ribbons carefully collected in one folder clippings from magazines with descriptions of primitive tricks were waiting for him. Rebecca and Chaim, treating their only son's occupation as a harmless children's hobby, obediently acted as the first spectators of all tricks, and on weekends and holidays they even took the child to "Tonet", where they allowed him to choose any gift for himself.
By the age of 12, the future magician already had the entire arsenal that every professional magician is supposed to have. Guided by clippings from magazines and his own intuition, David learned to demonstrate two dozen different tricks - and they began to invite him to matinees at schools and to charity concerts: almost every weekend, Dodi showed something from his program and traveled all over the year Metachen hometown. Classmates still did not like Kotkin, but their parents were delighted with the child: rumors about a young wizard in a small town spread at the speed of light. "While you and your friends are doing some nonsense, walking after school and cycling, David Kotkin has already become famous! He does not just sit around and play the fool. He must have gone far. And he is your age !" - approximately with these words, after each performance of little Dodi, parents scolded each of his classmates. It is clear that after another similar replica of the future Copperfield, they began to hate even more: in his hometown, he would never have a single friend.
This must be why every evening, falling asleep, little Dodik imagined not full halls, applause and shouts of "bravo!", but his departure from New Jersey with three large suitcases, "like real magicians."
When David was 15 years old, he was admitted to the American Society of Magicians - Kotkin became not only its youngest member, but also the most stubborn: the young man talked with fellow magicians exclusively on "production" topics, discussing the latest developments in the field of "false flights", disappearances and sawing. A year later, David, who had not even graduated from school, was invited to give several lectures at the course of magicians and illusionists at New York University.
Myself a stuntman
"DO NOT WRITE on posters" Kotkin ", I came up with a sonorous pseudonym under which I will someday become world famous," David asked the director of the university theater. At the age of 18, the young magician enters the study of "magic as a science" and in the same place, at the university, begins to play in the musical "The Magician" - of course, the wizard. "Write like this," he said, straightening his shoulders, "starring David Copperfield!"
But, studying at the university, playing on stage, Copperfield will not leave his training for a day: repeating old tricks, developing new ones ... He communicates with people only when necessary. Rebecca and Haim once hinted to their son that all his peers at least occasionally go to the cinema, go for walks or discos, meet and tell funny stories to each other, but David coldly cut him off: “But I do business instead. Then you will see who will they be and who will I be!" Loneliness seems to him a completely organic state, and communication with someone makes him tense up and think over every phrase. Of course, it will seem strange to parents that Dodi never had a girlfriend, but they will not dare to ask him about it.
David graduated from the university, already being widely known, under the new sonorous surname Copperfield: his show gathered halls, and the wizard himself worked as a TV presenter in his spare time - David received 5 Emmy awards for the ABC Magic program. But television and simple tricks, the effect of which was given for the most part by video editing, were not the meaning of his life.
During this period, David met a man named Don Wein - he was also interested in tricks, but from a different, technical side. Copperfield, having talked with Don several times, offered the young man at that time fabulous fees for writing stunt scripts for David - and he did not lose. It was Don, always remaining in the shadows, who provided Copperfield with world fame: he owns the ideas and detailed schemes of such tricks as flying over the Grand Canyon, passing through the Great Wall of China, the disappearance "by magic" of the Statue of Liberty and the Orient Express car.
"There are only thirty lighting effects," Don explained to David, "each magician bases his tricks on only two or three of them. I will include all thirty in your program, and you will be inimitable."
Copperfield, all his life striving for the status of "inimitable", in a few months of cooperation with Wayne made him his right hand. They recruited 300 people to the team: 80 permanent staff members, including mechanics, pyrotechnicians, and the best lighting directors, will have to attend each show. The total weight of all the "magical equipment" required for each Copperfield performance exceeded 30 tons.
The months of preparation for the "show that will shock the whole world" were not easy for David: several times he, in a state of extreme exhaustion, fell asleep right at the rehearsal base and woke up from the fact that his stomach was cramping, then David recalled that he had not eaten anything for two days and did not went home to change or shave. From the participation of stuntmen in the program Copperfield categorically refused. "I'm my own stuntman!" he insisted, even after the failed fire stunt. Then all of David was engulfed in flames, and the troupe was hardly able to put it out - the magician was taken away by ambulance and released from the burn center only a week later.
When representatives of his PR company announced that the image of magician No. 1 was negatively affected by his unsociableness, David was seriously surprised. “Mr. Copperfield, don’t get me wrong,” said Wendy Leyster, an advertiser, “you have a romantic image, but by the age of forty you have not given the slightest reason to think that you can, in principle, have a woman! Tell me honestly, Do you have any complex?
David just shrugged. He didn't have a complex. It's just that in all this leapfrog the magician forgot that people are usually burdened by loneliness - for him it was an absolutely normal state. And then Wendy laid out her plan for Claudia Schiffer.
Lifelong marathon
Strangely, she was engaged for tomorrow evening to a grand concert, where she was supposed to go along with the magician, and they were not going to call up until that moment.
Are you sleeping? Claudia almost broke into a scream, but immediately pulled herself together. Get up now, I tell you. Do you have the latest issue of Parimatch? So open it in the middle. Faster! See? You ruined my career! You ruined my name! Because of you, trickster magician, everything that I have done before is going down the drain! I don't want to see you or your agents again. Tell them to leave. And I'll send my lawyers to you!
David rubbed his eyes with his hands and stared at the pages indicated by Miss Schiffer. The text of the contract, an agreement between Claudia and David about their pseudo-novel, was printed qualitatively and large on the newspaper spread. Copperfield's lawyers, of course, sued Parimatch and paid Claudia a substantial amount for silence, but it became clear to everyone, even David's close associates Wendy Leyster and Don Wayne, that it was all over. The finest hour has passed, and everything artificial in one way or another has become noticeable. And David had a lot of something artificial - from magic to tan.
After this shameful revelation, the magician closed himself in his house for a week. The fact that he had already achieved everything baffled the man. By all accounts, it turned out that life was over. And David called his mother - so that she would come and live with him: "Let a month or a couple" ...
Today, Copperfield is scheduled by the minute: in the morning he drinks strong coffee in the library, finishing the chapter of a new book about the secrets of the magician's skill. Later he meets a stylist - once every two weeks, David paints over the appearing gray hair with paranoid punctuality. In the afternoon, he visits his own Museum of Magic - for the thousandth time he examines the exhibits that still delight him: the tools of the great magicians, the video library with the loudest numbers, saws, canes, cards that were in the hands of magicians. With special care, the magician checks the protection of his museum. David regularly inquires about her serviceability, even being on another continent.
The evening for the great magician and wizard always ends the same way: he is left alone, dials a familiar number and smiles when he hears familiar notes: "Hi, Dodik, son!" - and in the smallest details and details tells how his day went.
One day the phone rang in the house. The woman picked up the phone and heard: "Turn on the first channel, I'll show you my main trick."
The voice belonged to David Copperfield, and the woman who answered the phone was his mother, Rebecca. On that very first channel, a mother saw a shy son next to the most beautiful top model in the world, who smiled dazzlingly for all 32 teeth. It was Claudia Schiffer. From the TV screen, she announced her engagement and future wedding, which will take place on Christmas Day, ”she showed off an unusually beautiful and expensive ring, worth more than $ 4 million. With tragedy and confusion in her voice, Rebecca asked what was happening. David reassured his mother, explaining that this was just a successful joke, because he would forever remain her little son.
Copperfield and Schiffer met at one of David's shows in Berlin. The magician randomly named the girl among the many spectators. Fate or not, that girl turned out to be supermodel Claudia Schiffer. We can say that on that day between them there was that feeling that is called "love at first sight." The spark turned out to be so “hot” that a few months later David proposed to Claudia. And no one guessed that all this was the embodiment of a ready-made script by the PR director of the magician Wendy Leyster (by the way, she is one of the co-owners of Leinister-Dixon), who is also the creator of David's image. The idea of PR did not appear out of the blue: just then the magician's ratings and popularity fell, something had to be done. The situation demanded a win-win option, and what if the romance of the most famous magician with the most gorgeous woman would raise the ratings of both stars? The most beautiful model + the most mysterious man - the perfect formula for world fame.
Looking at this couple, it was fair to say that outwardly they contrasted very much: the blonde Schiffer stood out against the background of the burning brunette Copperfield. Thus, a contract was concluded, the content of which included such points: if Schiffer agreed to be in the role of a bride, every year Copperfield pays her $ 250 thousand, while Claudia did not have the right to appear in the general public with other men. As a bonus of a quarter of a million every year, the model received gifts to "shine" them in front of the paparazzi, tickets to all his shows and meetings in restaurants, which were recorded by journalists hired by David. So everything was fair.
When a mother saw her forty-year-old son on TV next to a woman, she became alarmed. Rebecca always protected her son from evil, but she assumed that sooner or later she would have to let him go. On the other hand, she devoted so many years to him, and now another woman appears who will take Dodik away (as Rebecca called her son in childhood). The mother knew very well what the price of her son's success was: when she put him on his feet, she still continued to be there on every tour of the great magician. She settled in the next room, and every evening she asked if Dodik was doing well with digestion, if he was in a good mood.
David Copperfield (real name of the magician - David Seth Kotkin) was the first and only child. He was born on January 16, 1956 in a family of Jews who moved from Odessa to the USA, New Jersey. This happened before David was born. By the way, Rebecca considered this move the best way out for the future of her children, believing that Odessa was musty and that one should immediately leave here for the capitalist states.
Dodik did not get along well with his peers. In his soul there was something like fear and at the same time hatred for classmates, he rarely talked with anyone and was withdrawn. At the same time, the complexes that David had were the catalysts for his remarkable ambition: the guy knew that he had to become famous, no matter what. He must wipe the nose of those who ignored him in childhood.
But, instead of peers, David's social circle included adults. Honorary and business people often gathered in their house, since Rebecca worked in an insurance agency, and Chaim (David's father) was the owner of one of the clothing stores in New Jersey.
David was first shown a card trick when he was 4 years old. It was one of the guests. Little David watched carefully and with concentration, and then repeated all the actions shown to him with the deck. "He's your magician!" the guests said approvingly. Indeed, David was unusually talented. He had a good memory and instantly memorized his mother's poems, then reproduced them exactly.
Already at the age of 6, David knew 7 tricks that he performed with the help of cards, dice and ribbons. In this he was helped by his grandfather, who looked after the boy in the absence of his parents. Once the kid showed her tricks to the parishioners of the synagogue (the Kotkins went there all together). Confident in the genius of her child, Rebecca even told the workers to build a special pedestal stage for her little magician.
After school hours, when peers competed in ball games, throwing disposable packaging from a school breakfast, Dodik walked around the city with his grandfather. Grandfather walked and examined the windows of shops with a variety of goods and came in to look at objects that had never been seen before, which he had not seen before in Odessa. And one day the grandson and grandfather got into the store "Tonet". A lot of strange but interesting things were sold here. David at that moment was captivated by hats with fake rabbits, various lamps, candles, saws, outlandish coasters, incomprehensible spirals, clothespins. As you might have guessed, the store sold items for circus performances. On that day, it was impossible to pull David out of the store - he and his grandfather left there only after it was closed. With wild delight, the guy examined each thing and imagined the mechanism of its work. After that, the kid told the old man that he wanted to be a magician, and not an insurance agent, like a mother, or an entrepreneur, like a father. Grandpa didn't take his grandson's intentions seriously and just nodded.
Every day, David flew from school to the house and did not turn the taunts of classmates about unusual objects for performing tricks, old decks of cards, clippings from magazines that described the process of performing simple tricks. Parents reacted kindly to David's classes, considering them his son's childhood hobby. They were the first to whom David showed his skills, and on holidays and weekends they went with him to the same store and bought him whatever he chose.
When David turned 12, he already claimed the title of a professional magician. He had all the necessary skills. Clippings from magazines, combined with intuition, gave David the opportunity to show 20 magic tricks on various topics. David began to be invited to various children's events, matinees, charity concerts. These classes took away almost every weekend of the young magician. Thus, during the year, David traveled all over the city of Metachen, where he lived. His classmates, as before, did not accept David and treated him unkindly, but their parents were pleasantly surprised and loved David's tricks. This was not good for their children, as parents admired Kotkin, and after each successful David program, they scolded their children for the fact that while they were doing nonsense in the yards, the fame and fame of their classmate was spreading at the speed of light. After such words, peers hated the magician even more and it is not surprising that David never made a friend in Metachen. Perhaps that is why, before going to bed, little David did not imagine the crowded halls of spectators with loud applause and shouts of “bravo!”, but himself, standing with 3 large suitcases, “like true magicians”, ready to leave the state.
At 15, David became a member of the American Society of Magicians. It must be said that he was not only the youngest member, but also the most stubborn: with his colleagues in society, he communicated only on “professional” topics and discussed with them advanced ideas and developments in the fields of illusion flights, disappearances and fake sawing. At 16, David was invited to give several lecture classes at New York University in the course of illusionists. The young man has already become a lecturer, not even graduating from school.
At the age of 18, David entered the university to study "magic as a science", played in the university theater. It was then that Kotkin came up with a pseudonym for himself, which, as he claimed, would someday bring him worldwide fame. He asked the director to write on the posters not David Kotkin, but David Copperfield. Thus, the magician was already a Copperfield in the university play "The Magician", where, as is obvious, he was a magician.
In parallel with studying and playing on stage, David set aside time every day for training - repeating old tricks and developing new ones. With people, he, as before, communicated only when he needed to. One day, Rebecca and Chaim told their son that his peers at least sometimes visit the cinema, clubs, discos, arrange friendly meetings, chat, to which David coldly said that he was doing business, adding that his parents would see who he would be and who they would be. . David did not consider his loneliness to be something abnormal, let alone bad, and communication with someone required tension and, most importantly, thinking over each phrase. Of course, parents will be surprised that Dodi never had a girl, but they will not ask about it anymore.
Copperfield graduated from the university and was already widely known: he collected full houses, and in his spare time he worked as a TV presenter of the ABC Magic program, for which he received half a dozen Emmy awards. But Copperfield saw the meaning of life not in video editing of simple tricks, but in their real incarnation.
At this time, David met an important person for him in the future - Don Wayne, who was interested in tricks, but from a technical aspect. They began to cooperate - Don Wein wrote scripts for Copperfield's stunts for fees that were crazy in those days. It was a great move. It was thanks to Don, who always remained in the background, that Copperfield gained worldwide fame: he wrote scripts for the passage of the Great Wall of China, the flight over the Grand Canyon, the disappearance of the Statue of Liberty and others.
After several months of working together, Don Wein became the right hand of David Copperfield. Their team consisted of three hundred people. This figure included 80 people who made up a permanent staff, including mechanics, pyrotechnicians, and the best lighting designers. All the "magical" equipment of the magician and his team weighed more than 30 tons.
The months of developing a global show that was supposed to shock the whole world were not easy. Sometimes, David fell asleep right on the site, and woke up from a wild pain in his stomach, remembering that he had not eaten normally for a long time and was not at home. Copperfield refused the services of stuntmen, even after he failed in the fire stunt. Then David, blazing in the fire, was put out with great difficulty. Another week the magician lay in the hospital with a burn.
Representatives of his PR company once said about the "unsociable" image of a magician, which David was very surprised at. Then Wendy Leyster asked Copperfield if he had any complexes, because by the age of 40 he had never even given a reason to suspect that he had a woman. David could only shrug. It wasn't a complex issue at all. It was just that, being absorbed in his favorite thing, it was absolutely normal for him to feel lonely, as before. At the same time, Wendy spoke about her idea regarding Claudia Schiffer.
According to Wendy, this move will increase the rating of the magician by 20 or even 40 percent, and will entertain him himself. David agreed.
One morning, Claudia suddenly tried to wake up Copperfield. With hysteria in her voice, she asked David to open a new issue of Parimatch and read what was written there. Schiffer blamed the magician for ruining her career and everything she had done before. She did not want to see Copperfield himself or his agents again.
Waking up, David opened the newspaper and on the indicated pages he saw the text of their pseudo-marriage contract with Schiffer. Copperfield had no choice but to sue the newspaper and pay the model a considerable amount for silence, but everyone already understood that the plan had failed and it was all over. Everything comes to an end, and not real, artificial - all the more short-lived.
The embarrassing revelation led to David being sidelined for a week. Everything told him that life was over. He achieved everything, and it baffled him. And then he called his mother and asked to live with him for a while.
Today it is hard to imagine that the great magician had such fluctuations, because now he has a very busy schedule: in the morning he drinks coffee and writes his book in the library. Then - a meeting with a stylist (David with unhealthy punctuality goes to him to paint over his gray hair). He devotes the afternoon to visiting his own museum of magic. In addition to examining the exhibits, Copperfield carefully checks its defense system. The evening of the magician is always the same: as usual, alone, Dodik calls his mother and tells how he spent his day.