Uri Geller

Geller married Hannah Shtrang, the sister of his stage manager, in 1979 and they have two children together. Pop singer Michael Jackson was best man at Geller's wedding, and the two of them had a famous friendship.

Since the 1970's, Geller has billed himself as a genuine psychic, rather than a stage magician or entertainer. His claims in his early career that his psychic abilities were granted by extraterrestrials made him the subject of widespread criticism.

Throughout his career, Geller tried to use his psychic powers to predict or affect the outcomes of sports games. His almost unbroken track record of incorrect predictions caused a fan of skeptic James Randi to describe Geller's endorsement as 'the curse of Uri Geller'.

Uri Geller was born to a Hungarian father and an Austrian mother who were both Jewish. He was born in Tel Aviv when it was still part of the British Mandate of Palestine.

Geller's family moved to Nicosia, Cypress, where he grew up and graduated high school. When he was 18 he joined the military, served as a paratrooper in the Israeli Army, and was wounded in the 1967 ‘Six-Day War’.

After he was injured during service, Geller began performing in nightclubs for small audiences. Between 1968 and 1969, he worked as a photographic model before his stage performances began to earn him more popularity.

Geller's career began with early television appearances in the '70s, wherein he performed many different illusions including bending spoons, describing hidden drawings, and other mysterious tricks. Although he claimed that he achieved these effects through feats of telekinesis and other psychic abilities, many critics and skeptics were quick to debunk his techniques.

A great deal of the public recognition that Geller has achieved comes in the form of litigation and lawsuits against his claimed abilities and the potential for fraud. In 1971 he was sued by a mechanical engineer who claimed that Geller's show promised him psychic abilities and he saw only stage tricks. The engineer won the case and was awarded the price of his ticket, about $5.

Despite facing many criticism, a scientific experiment conducted in 1974 by the ‘Stanford Research Institute’ found what they deemed to be enough evidence to warrant authenticity of Geller’s skills, and coined the phrase the 'Geller effect'.

Although throughout his career he claimed to be a true psychic and dowser, Geller admitted in his autobiography 'My Story' that he originally began doing stage magic tricks as a nightclub performer to make his act last a little longer.

He still maintained his identity as a psychic in the face of many outspoken skeptics. Published in 1975, his autobiography was the first of 16 books, both fiction and non-fiction, that he published.

Geller’s career as a psychic is rife with controversies and much of his fame rests on the speculation around the authenticity of his proclaimed supernatural powers. He had amassed huge fortune working as a mining-dowser, predicting availability of mines for businesses, a fact he confesses to in his autobiography.