Philippe Petit - Early Life

Early Life

Petit was born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France; his father, Edmond Petit, was an author and a former Army pilot. At an early age he discovered magic and juggling. At 16, he took his first steps on the wire. Petit learned everything by himself as he was being expelled from five different schools. "Within one year," he told a reporter, "I taught myself to do all the things you could do on a wire. I learned the backward somersault, the front somersault, the unicycle, the bicycle, the chair on the wire, jumping through hoops. But I thought, 'What is the big deal here? It looks almost ugly.' So I started to discard those tricks and to reinvent my art." He also became adept at equestrianism, fencing, carpentry, rock-climbing and the art of bullfighting. Spurning circuses and their formulaic performances, on the sidewalks of Paris he created his street persona. In the early 1970s, he frequently juggled and worked on a slack rope in New York City's Washington Square Park.

Beginning in the 1970s, Petit began eyeing world-famous structures as stages for high-wire walks, which he executed as a combination of circus act and public performance. He performed his first such walk between the towers of the Notre Dame de Paris. In 1973, he walked a wire rigged between the two north pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in Sydney, Australia.