Born February 27: Derren Brown

Derren Brown does his tricks on stage for money. Since 2000, he has been on British television annually blowing viewers' minds and effing with their senses through his signature mix of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection, and showmanship." The forty-one year-old professional illusionist, mentalist, and skeptic makes no claims of psychic or paranormal ability; indeed, he scoffs at those who do so. Beyond his seven tv series and eight specials, he has created five stage shows including the last year's Svengali, which the Daily Mail critic called "the eeriest, most captivating, brain-baffling show I’ve ever seen." He has published four books, the best-reviewed of which is Tricks of the Mind. In his spare time, Brown paints oversized, exaggerated portraits of famous people and has gathered more than one hundred of them in this book. Let's leave to romance writers the humid analogy that the most mysterious magic of all is love, but after coming out in 2007, Brown has finally found it for himself. He says, “I spent a lot of time thinking about me and working on what I wanted to be before I came into a relationship. In some ways, it’s bad because you come into relationship quite late without a lot of experience and you have a lot to learn. But that can also be exciting. Certainly, it’s lovely to have somebody love you and it’s lovely to love someone else.”