Keith Barry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Keith Patrick Barry is an Irish illusionist, mentalist, and close-up magician.
Born in County Waterford, Ireland in 1979, Barry's interest in magic began at the age of fourteen when he purchased a book entitled Magic for the complete Klutz.
Since 2003, Barry has performed on his own television show in Europe entitled Close Encounters with Keith Barry. The show has been played in 28 countries worldwide.
In 2004, Barry had an MTV television special entitled Brainwashed. 2005 ended with Barry performing a live Christmas special in Europe. Keith Barry Live With Friends featured various celebrities such as magician Billy McComb, Jim Corr of The Corrs, and The Conway Sisters [1].
Barry's success throughout Europe coupled with his MTV special led to a four year multi-special deal with CBS. His first special with CBS debuted on May 12, 2006 and was entitled Keith Barry: Extraordinary. [2] The special later aired on The CW on New Years Eve 2006 and on New Years Day, 2007 on TV3 (New Zealand).
In the Keith Barry: Extraordinary special, he performed various pieces of illusion and interesting mental feats. In one trick, which he referred to as "Black Ops Hypnosis", he made a host from Entertainment Tonight forget that he had torn a specific page from a book and sealed it in an envelope, in the span of roughly five minutes. His television acts were done with the use of A- and B-list celebrities, which side-stepped the oft-cited criticism of David Blaine, namely, that he edits out the tricks that don't go well for television. While his show did not receive much press or promotion, the CBS special garnered many fans in the blogging world.[3]
As an actor, he performed in the Open Water episode of CSI: Miami.
