Las Vegas pickpocket steals the show in ‘Focus’
By CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
It sounds like someone who’d be lurking in the background of one of those Joel Schumacher “Batman” movies. You know, next to the artistic muggers and the flamboyant burglars.
But Las Vegan Apollo Robbins has carved out a niche in the magic world thanks to his almost supernatural ability to take something off or place something on practically anyone. He estimates he’s picked more than 250,000 pockets — “FBI, U.S. Marshals, I’ve stolen from everybody pretty much I can think of,” he says — in the name of entertainment. And those skills, as well as his knack for social engineering and applied deception, not to mention his near encyclopedic knowledge of cons, will be on display starting Friday in the new Will Smith movie, “Focus.”
“Overall, we created maybe 40 bits, I’d say, for all the actors throughout the film,” Robbins says on the phone from England while promoting the movie.
“We” includes his wife and partner in crime, fellow deceptionist Ava Do. Robbins, 40, credits her interest and eventual degree in psychobiology with expanding his horizons beyond traditional pickpocketing, something he picked up while growing up in Missouri with two half-brothers who weren’t shy about stealing. Read more…