Grand Illusion

Have you ever heard the quote: "A magician is just an actor pretending to be a magician?" actor Matt Keeslar asks magician David Blaine. "That was Robert-Houdin, the guy Houdini named himself after," says Blaine, nodding his head. "There's no such thing as a magician - or magic," Keeslar explains, "there are just actors portraying." Whatever he and Blaine consider themselves, one thing's for certain at this Elle photo shot: These gifted young performers are ideally suited to portray a variety of contemporary male archetypes-would outshine a tired tux at this month's Academy Awards.

Meet the future of hollywood-style hocus-pocus, two book- and street-smart mid-twenties Manhattanites, whose ideas about entertaining illusions have nothing to do with smoke and mirrors. Keeslar's a preppy Julliard-trained Upper West Sider who honed his craft Off Broadway and in the independent films of Whit Stillman (The Last Days of Disco) and Gregg Araki (the forthcoming sexual farce Splendor, which premiered at Sundance). Blaine is a Brooklyn-born city slicker who made his name with impromptu performances at downtown hotspots, amazing the likes of Madonna and Robert De Niro (who subsequently optioned Blaine's life story for a movie treatment) with an ordinary deck of cards-and extraordinary slights of hand. This month, he broadens his horizons while seeking out unsuspecting strangers (voodoo priests in Haiti, cannibals in South America, Bridget Hall in a SoHo club) for his special, David Blaine: Magic Man. "I consider the world my stage," he says, "it's the theater of the damned."

"Acting is all about creating an illusion," Keeslar says of his own form of magic. "It's helping an audience to believe the lie." Meanwhile, a hairstylist is busy building a pom-padour atop Keeslar's head, assisting his transformation from postmodern dandy to rockabilly stud. "Costumes are integral to any character-even if it's yourself-but especially to create a different perona, because society places so much emphasis on how people look."

The straightlaced DA Keeslar played in The Last Days of Disco is the polar opposite of Zed, his punk-rocker character in Splendor. "I bleached my hari Billy Idol-platinum, wore ice-blue contacts, had a bar code tattooed to my arm, and leopard-skin shirt," Keeslar says. "Zed's like a shaved gorilla. I had to get waxed-the most painful experience of my life. A 300-pound woman with a moustache just started ripping hair out of my virgin chest. It's since grown back, with vengeance."

Such are typical on-the-job hazards for this anti-Method character actor. "I don't think you can create a character internally," he says. "It's all external-the costume and hair and makeup does most of the acting for you. There probably are actors who can convince themselves they are different people, but-how do I say this without being too offensive?- they either don't have a strong sense of self, or they have multiple-personality disorder and should be institutionalized. If a script is well written, you don't even have to show any emotion. I don't think, Now I'm going to display 'sadness.' An audience's willingness to believe creates the emotion."

"A great artist is more truthful on stage than most people are in their lives," says Blaine. And, these days, considerably more style-conscious. From Blaine's intimage knowledge of designer collections ("Calvin makes a jacket just like this Helmut Lang," he informs a stylist), it's clear that the labels attached to his costumes of choice matter although he insists that practicality always trumps trendiness. "I like black because it's simple," he says. "My favorite thing about Einstein is that all his suits were identical, because he didn't want to think about what to wear."