Derren Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English mentalist, illusionist, and writer. He is a self-described "psychological illusionist" whose acts are often designed to expose the methods of those who claim to possess supernatural powers, such as faith healers and mediums. His live performances, which incorporate audience participation and comedy, often include statements describing how his effects are achieved through a combination of psychology, showmanship, magic, misdirection, and suggestion.
Brown began performing in 1992, making his television debut with Mind Control (2000). He has since starred in several more shows for stage and television, including Something Wicked This Way Comes (2006) and Svengali (2012) which won him two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment, as well as The Experiments (2011) for which he was awarded a BAFTA for Best Entertainment Programme at the 2012 awards. Brown made his Broadway debut with his 2019 stage show Secret. He has also written books for both magicians and the general public.
Early life, family and education
Derren Brown, son of Chris and Bob Brown, was born in Croydon, a borough of London, on 27 February 1971. He was raised in Croydon's Purley area, which he described as "the epitome of middle-class suburbia". He has a brother who is nine years younger than him.
He was privately educated at Whitgift School in South Croydon, where his father was a swimming coach, then studied law and German at the University of Bristol. While there, he attended a hypnotist show by Martin S. Taylor, and it inspired him to seek a career in illusion and hypnosis.
As an undergraduate, he started working as a conjuror, performing the traditional skills of close-up magic in bars and restaurants. In 1992, he started performing stage shows at the University of Bristol under the stage name Darren V. Brown; the "V" stood for "Victor".
At the International Magic shop in Clerkenwell, Brown met Scottish-American magician and comedian Jerry Sadowitz, who put him in touch with H&R Publishers and magician Andrew O'Connor's production company, Objective Productions. This led to his television debut with the show Mind Control (2000), which became one of the company's award-winning productions. After several shows with Objective, Brown set up his own company Vaudeville Productions with former Objective executives Michael Vine, Andrew O’Connor, and Paul Sandler, in order to produce his own shows as well as other projects with other performers. Its first show was Brown's TV special, Pushed to the Edge.
In 2008, Brown made a brief cameo appearance in the supernatural drama series Crooked House. An interview with Brown was featured in Richard Dawkins' 2009 two-part documentary series The Enemies of Reason. Brown explained various psychological techniques used by purported psychics and spiritual mediums to manipulate their audiences. The most notable was cold reading, a technique which he discusses extensively in his book Tricks of the Mind. Some video footage was also used from his TV special Messiah. As part of Channel 4's 3D season in 2009, Brown presented Derren Brown's 3D Magic Spectacular.
In January 2011, to celebrate 10 years since his first television appearance, Channel 4 held a special "Derren Brown Night". As well as re-showing The Heist (which had won a recent poll of favourite Brown specials) and one of his Enigma live shows, the channel screened a special documentary, Derren Brown: Behind the Mischief, a personal and candid film about Brown which included the story of how he met his co-writer (who was featured in Seance), his mother's feelings about his involvement in the Russian Roulette special, and an emotional visit back to his old school, university, and bars/pubs where he first began his career. Celebrity contributors included Matt Lucas, Jo Whiley, Stephen Merchant, and Simon Pegg. In January 2013, he was featured in a Channel 4 Deal or No Deal special, where he appeared to have predicted all the correct boxes to win the big jackpot of £250,000. That same year, he appeared in a comedy sketch at the beginning of an 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Deal or No Deal special.
In January 2014, Brown appeared as himself in the mystery TV series Sherlock episode "The Empty Hearse", as part of a theory regarding how the title character faked his own death. On 9 November 2018, he appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience to promote his Netflix special Sacrifice.
In February 2021, Brown appeared in a trailer for the horror video game Little Nightmares II, in which he discussed the nature of nightmares while some of the monsters featured in the game appeared around him.
Brown states that he uses a variety of methods to achieve his illusions including traditional magic/conjuring techniques, memory techniques, hypnosis, body language reading, cognitive psychology, cold reading, and psychological, subliminal (specifically the use of "perception without awareness", PWA), and ideomotor suggestion. Some people additionally ascribe methods to him that he denies, ranging from the pseudoscience neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to paid actors.
In an interview in New Scientist in 2005, when asked how he "acquired his psychological skills", Brown says that he learnt skills as a hypnotist, which he was not sure how to apply until he started performing close-up magic. When asked whether he is able to detect lies, Brown claimed to be able to read subtle cues such as micro-muscle movements that indicate to him if someone is lying. Concerning his apparent success at hypnotising people, he stated that he can normally spot a suggestible type of person and chooses that person to be his participant. He believes that the presence of a television camera also increases suggestibility.
Several authors have claimed that Brown uses NLP in his act which "consists of a range of magical 'tricks', misdirection and, most intriguing, setting up audiences to provide the response that he wishes them to provide by using subtle subliminal cues in his conversation with them". In response to the accusation that he unfairly claims to be using NLP whenever he performs, he wrote, "The truth is I have never mentioned it outside of my book." He does have an off-stage curiosity about the system, and he has discussed it in the larger context of hypnotism and suggestion. In his book Tricks of the Mind, he mentions that he attended an NLP course with Richard Bandler, co-creator of NLP and mentor of Paul McKenna. He also describes the NLP concept of eye-accessing cues as a technique of "limited use" in his book Pure Effect. Brown also mentions in Tricks of the Mind that NLP students were given a certificate after a four-day course, certifying them to practise NLP as a therapist. A year after Brown attended the class, he received a number of letters saying that he would receive another certificate, not for passing a test (as he discontinued practising NLP following the course), but for keeping in touch. After ignoring their request, he later received the new certificate for NLP in the post, unsolicited.
Actual versus suggested methods
Brown often claims to reveal the methods by which he achieves his tricks, but this is typically an additional layer of misdirection, as the stated methods are not the methods that he uses. The perception by his audience that he uses deep psychological insights typically aids the misdirection required for his tricks. He employs a variety of techniques to ensure his audience cannot deduce the methods behind his illusions. Some critics have argued that his presentation as a sceptic might be misleading, as certain elements of his performances could be interpreted as promoting pseudoscience. For example, after performing a trick in which he appeared to predict lottery numbers, his demonstrated explanation included using the Wisdom of Crowds, but it has been theorised that the actual method relied on split-screen video. Some commentators such as Simon Singh have suggested that such performances might inadvertently conflict with efforts to reduce magical thinking.