Criss Angel, The famous American Magician
Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos (born December 19, 1967), better known by his stage name Criss Angel, is an American magician, illusionist, musician, escapologist, and stunt performer. He is best known for starring in his own television show, Criss Angel Mindfreak.
Angel was born to John and Dimitra Sarantakos and raised in East Meadow, Long Island, New York along with two brothers, Costa and J.D. His father owned a restaurant and doughnut shop and was devoted to personal fitness before dying of cancer in 1998. He is Greek American. Angel was first introduced to magic at age 6, after his aunt taught him a card trick. His interest grew and by the time he graduated from East Meadow High School, he was not interested in attending university and instead he aimed at becoming a professional magician.
Criss Angel is the star and creator of the A&E Network show Criss Angel Mindfreak. Seasons 1 and 2 were filmed at The Aladdin in Las Vegas, with Season 3 at the Luxor Hotel. Premiering on July 20, 2005, the illusions have included walking on water, levitating above the Luxor Hotel (in the light of 39 lightbulbs that can be seen from space), floating between two buildings, causing a Lamborghini to disappear, surviving in an exploding C4 Crate, cutting himself in half in full view of an audience and getting run over by a steamroller while lying stomach down on a bed of glass. Also in season 3 he was known for jumping out of a moving car. Angel was injured and stopped production for 3 weeks.
Starting in October 2007 he appeared as a judge on Phenomenon, with Uri Geller and in a CNN interview about the show he told Larry King "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust live and on television."
On the October 31, 2007 episode of the reality show Phenomenon, Paranormalist Jim Callahan performed a summoning, purportedly of author Raymond Hill, to help discover the contents of a locked box. Although fellow judge Uri Geller praised the performance, Angel called it "comical" and subsequently challenged both Callahan and Geller to guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so. This led to an argument between Callahan and Angel, during which Callahan walked toward Angel and called him an "ideological bigot", with the two pulled apart as the show promptly went to a commercial break. Angel has since revealed the contents of one envelope and at the unveiling he challenged Geller one more time. Geller was unsuccessful, and the envelope was revealed to contain an index card with the numbers "911" printed on it for September 11, 2001. Criss' explanation was this: "If on 9-10 somebody could have predicted that 9-11 was going to happen, they could have saved thousands of lives". The other envelope's contents was scheduled to be revealed on the first episode of Season 4 of Criss Angel: Mindfreak. However, the contents of the other envelope were never revealed and remain a mystery to this day.
Personal life
In 2002, Angel married his longtime girlfriend JoAnn Winkhard. The couple filed for divorce five years later. Although Angel was seen with his wife in the buried alive illusion (season 1, episode 6, 2005), she was not credited as his wife. Rather she was listed as "Criss' Girl". During the divorce proceedings the attorney of Angel's estranged wife claimed that their relationship was kept secret to further Angel's career.
In November 2008, Angel began dating Hugh Hefner's former girlfriend Holly Madison. The relationship ended in February 2009.
Criss Angel's Official Website: www.crissangel.com
Follow him on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/crissangel
Find him on Facebook: http://facebook.com/crissangel
Find him on Myspace: http://myspace.com/crissangel
