Derren Brown Biography Derren Brown (born February 27, 1971) is an English mentalist, illusionist, and writer. He is a self-proclaimed “psychological illusionist” whose actions are frequently intended to expose the tactics of individuals who claim to have supernatural abilities, such as faith healers and mediums. His live performances, which are heavily infused with audience participation and comedy, typically begin with him telling the audience that his achievements are obtained by a blend of psychology, showmanship, magic, deception, and suggestion. Brown started performing in 1992 and made his television debut with Mind Control (2000). He has since appeared in several other stage and television performances, including Something Wicked This Way Comes (2006) and Svengali (2012), which won him two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment, as well as The Experiments (2011).
Derren Brown Biography 2025
Derren debuted on UK television in December 2000 with a series of programs called Mind Control. In the United Kingdom, his name is now almost synonymous with the practice of psychological manipulation. Among his varied and notorious TV career, Derren has played Russian Roulette live, persuaded middle managers to commit armed robbery, led the nation in a séance, trapped viewers at home on their sofas, successfully predicted the National Lottery, motivated a shy man to land a packed passenger plane at 30,000 feet, hypnotized a man to assassinate Stephen Fry, and created a zombie apocalypse for an unsuspecting participant after seemingly ending the world. He has also published several best-selling books and, a first in the history of magic, toured with eight sell-out one-man shows.
Derren Brown
Derren Brown is an English mentalist, illusionist, and writer. He is a self-described “psychological illusionist” whose acts are often designed to expose the methods of those who claim to possess supernatural powers, such as faith healers and mediums.
Born: 27 February 1971 (age 53 years), Purley, United Kingdom
Parents: Bob Brown, Chris Brown
Height: 1.75 m
Siblings: Dominic Brown
Occupations: Mentalist; illusionist; writer
Derren Brown Biography 2025 Details
| Born |
27 February 1971 (age 53)
|
| Occupations |
- Mentalist
- illusionist
- writer
|
| Years active |
1992–present |
| Category |
Singers Bio |
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Early life
Derren Brown was born on February 27, 1971, in the London Borough of Croydon as the son of Chris and Bob Brown. He grew up in Croydon’s Purley neighborhood, which he called as “the epitome of middle-class suburbia”. He has a brother who is nine years younger. He received a private education at Whitgift School in South Croydon, where his father coached swimming, before attending the University of Bristol to study law and German. While there, he saw Martin S. Taylor’s hypnotist show, which inspired him to pursue a career in illusion and hypnosis. As an undergraduate, he began working as a conjurer, performing traditional close-up magic in clubs and restaurants. In 1992, he began.
Career
Brown met Scottish-American magician and comic Jerry Sadowitz at the International Magic Shop in Clerkenwell, who introduced him to H&R publishers and magician Andrew O’Connor’s production business, Objective Productions. This resulted in his breakout show, Mind Control (2000), which went on to become their first award-winning offering. Following many shows with Objective, Brown founded his own business, Vaudeville Productions, with former Objective executives Michael Vine, Andrew O’Connor, and Paul Sandler, to produce his own shows as well as collaborations with other artists. It debuted with Brown’s television spectacular Pushed to the Edge. Brown appeared briefly in Crooked House, a supernatural drama series, in 2008. In 2009, Richard Dawkins published an interview with Brown.
Brown described the numerous psychological strategies utilized by alleged psychics and spiritual mediums to influence their listeners. The most noteworthy was cold reading, which he explores in detail in his book Tricks of the Mind. He also used video clips from his TV special Messiah. Brown hosted Derren Brown’s 3D Magic Spectacular for Channel 4’s 3D season in 2009.
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Personal life
Although Brown’s parents were not Christians, they enrolled him in Bible courses when he was five years old because they believed it was the “right thing to do”. To deal with difficulties of self-esteem and sexuality, he became an evangelical Christian throughout his adolescence in order to show himself as confident and asexual; but, by his twenties, he had become an atheist, having determined that his belief in Christianity had no validity. He came out as gay at the age of 31 in The Independent on Sunday. He was dating a designer named Marc at the time; however, they later parted after eight years together.
Brown has been a patron of the Parrot Zoo Trust in Friskney since 2004. He informed LeftLion that he is a great enthusiast of parrots. I think they are intriguing creatures. Many of them live longer than humans, and it’s fascinating to me how they learn to mimic human sounds even when they don’t fully understand what they’re saying. Brown’s defining style was short brown hair with sideburns and a goatee until he shaved both his head and face in 2013, after which he occasionally sports stubble.
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Methods
Brown claims to use a variety of methods to create his illusions, including traditional magic/conjuring techniques, memory techniques, hypnosis, body language reading, cognitive psychology, cold reading, and psychological, subliminal (specifically the use of PWA; “perception without awareness”), and ideomotor suggestion. Others attribute methods to him that he disputes, including pseudoscience neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and paid actors. When asked how he “acquired his psychological skills” in a 2005 interview with New Scientist, Brown stated that he learned skills as a hypnotist, which he was unsure how to apply until he began performing close-up magic. When asked about his ability to detect lies, Brown claimed to be able to interpret minute indications such as micro-muscle movements that indicate to him.
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Derren Brown Net Worth
Derren Brown is a British illusionist, mentalist, painter, author, and skeptic with a net worth of $7.5 million.
What you need to know about the Illusionist
- As well as being an illusionist, Derren Brown works as a patron of the Parrot Zoo Trust in East Lincolnshire, England.
- Derren is known to be an animal lover and had a parrot named Figaro for ten years before his death, he later owned another parrot named Rasputin. As a child, Derren Brown had two dogs, Tammy and Lucy, which he kept as pets.
- As a painter, he paints famous people and makes hilarious pictures of them.
- For a magician, it’s no surprise that Derren Brown is a fan of Taxidermy.
- It’s worth knowing that the famous illusionist had in the past been banned from performing any of his tricks in many UK casinos.
