It is a familiar story to magicians, the incessant physical training and weight maintenance to achieve the perfect body for magic. For actor Jim Carrey, however, the rigors of our art were daunting.
He told People (the magazine, not just a collection of individuals standing near him) his strict diet gave him a great body but “it’s not a happy place to be.”
“It’s not a natural place to live in that kind of shape,” he said. “It looks great. It’s fantastic and gets a lot of attention, but you have to eat, like, antimatter to stay in that kind of shape.”
Indeed, many magicians have found the diet and exercise required to maintain the perfect “magician’s body” just too demanding and have left the profession. Michael Jordan once commented that he had hoped to be a magician but found the constant physical conditioning “just impossible.” “It was like trying to hit a curve ball in triple-A; I just couldn’t do it.”
Magic historians credit Harry Houdini with setting the standard for the “magician’s body.”
“Before Houdini,” said one magic scholar, “magicians looked like the average audience member. Some were in great shape, some were in terrible shape and some looked like they were in great shape but were really in terrible shape. There were none who looked like they were in great shape but were really in terrible shape.”
Houdini’s emphasis on physical conditioning forced him to run several miles a day and perform calisthenics. He ate right and did not smoke. In his youth, he was a competitive runner and circus performer. Those two avocations sculpted his body to near Adonis perfection and set his own personal standard for a lifetime of physically demanding discipline.
It was not commonly known that Harry Kellar could bench press in excess of 200 lbs or that Adelaide Herrmann could perform one-handed push-ups with either arm.
“In those days, most magicians kept their superb bodies under wraps, so to speak. Audiences were not attracted to performers because of their physiques,” one commentator noted. “Only freak show performers removed enough clothing to show anything.”
Today, most magic conventions look like a gathering of Olympic competitors. “Compared with the other performing arts, amateur and professional magicians have far and away the best bodies and physical conditioning.” Continue reading “Jim Carrey on Starving for Magic Physique”
