Early Life
Born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine, to Jewish parents from Hungary and Austria, Geller is the son of Itzhaak Geller (Gellér Izsák), a retired army sergeant major, and Manzy Freud (Freud Manci). It is claimed that Geller is a distant relative of Sigmund Freud on his mother's side.
At the age of 11, Geller's family moved to Nicosia, Cyprus, where he attended a high school, The Terra Santa College and learned English. At the age of 18 he served in the Israeli Army's Paratroopers Brigade, and was wounded in action during the 1967 Six-Day War. He worked as a photographic model in 1968 and 1969; during that time, he began to perform for small audiences as a nightclub entertainer, becoming well known in Israel.
Geller first started to perform in theatres, public halls, auditoriums, military bases and universities in Israel. By the 1970s, Geller had become known in the United States and Europe. He also received attention from the scientific community, whose members were interested in examining his reported psychic abilities. At the peak of his career in the 1970s, he worked full-time, performing for television audiences worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Uri Geller
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)