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:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)