Philippe Petit (French pronunciation: [filip pəti]; born 13 August 1949) is a French highwire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized highwire walks between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of 7 August 1974.^[1] For his unauthorized feat 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground – which he referred to as "le coup"^[2] – Petit had gathered together a team consisting of two of his closest, childhood friends from France (Jean-Louis Blondeau, and Jean Francois Heckel) joined by four recruited Americans (Alan Welner, David Forman, Barry Greenhouse, and Jim Moore) plus a seventh comrade of Petit's (Mark Lewis, hailing from Australia, had previously been instrumental in aiding Petit wire-walk across Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973). The group spent many months collaborating in detailed preparation, travelling to the World Trade Center multiple times, building an "outdoor" scale model of the roofs of both buildings, brainstorming and theorizing ways to bypass security, how to transport the hundreds of pounds of necessary materials from the street level up 104 stairs, and subsequently rigging the wire Petit would ultimately need for his walk. In spite of multiple obstacles, and a rescheduling from an earlier date in May of that same year, Petit and his team successfully secured the placement of his rigging; a 200-kilogram (440-pound) custom-made "walking wire", two "cavaletti" guide wires, plus a 8-metre (30-foot) long, 25-kilogram (55-pound) balancing pole. Despite NYPD intervening, Petit performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire. The act was considered to be not only an incredible performance of acrobatic skill and artistry, but perhaps even moreso, an ingenious feat of modern-day engineering. Upon completing his 45-minute, eight pass walk, Petit and Heckel were both arrested, charged with the crimes of Trespassing and Disorderly Persons, and forced to submit to psychiatric evaluations before being released. Petit's charges were ultimately dismissed after he agreed to perform on camera before a small group of children. Heckel was subsequently expelled from the United States. Petit would later be issued a "Lifetime Pass" granting him free admission to the WTC Observation Deck. Petit's wire-walk earned him a Guinness Book of Records for the highest wire-crossing without the use of a net or other type of safety tether, 1350' above ground (411 meters). (Petit's record would remain unbroken until 2015, when 50 year old stuntman Freddy Nock, of Switzerland, completed a 39-minute wire-walk, high above two towering peaks in the Swiss mountains).

Since then, Petit has lived in New York, where he has been artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, also a location of other aerial performances. He has done wire walking as part of official celebrations in New York, across the United States, and in France and other countries, as well as teaching workshops on the art. In 2008, Man on Wire, a documentary directed by James Marsh about Petit's walk between the towers, won numerous awards including the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He was also the subject of a children's book and an animated adaptation of it, released in 2005. The Walk, a film based on Petit's walk, was released in September 2015, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit and directed by Robert Zemeckis.

He also became adept at equestrianism, juggling, fencing, carpentry, rock-climbing, and bullfighting. Spurning circuses and their formulaic performances, he created his street persona on the sidewalks of Paris. In the early 1970s, he visited New York City, where he frequently juggled and worked on a slackline in Washington Square Park.

Petit was born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France; his father Edmond Petit was an author and an Army Pilot. At an early age, Petit discovered magic and juggling. He loved to climb, and at 16, he took his first steps on a tightrope wire. He told a reporter,

Within one year, I taught myself to do all the things you could do on a wire. I learned the backward somersault, the front somersault, the unicycle, the bicycle, the chair on the wire, jumping through hoops. But I thought, "What is the big deal here? It looks almost ugly." So I started to discard those tricks and to reinvent my art.^[3]

In June 1971, Petit secretly installed a cable between the two towers of Notre-Dame de Paris. On the morning of 26 June 1971, he "juggled balls" and "pranced back and forth" as he crossed the wire on foot to the applause of the crowd below.^[4]

Petit became known to New Yorkers in the early 1970s for his frequent tightrope-walking performances and magic shows in the city parks, especially Washington Square Park. Petit's most famous performance was in August 1974, conducted on a wire between the roofs of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground. The towers were still under construction and had not yet been fully occupied. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire, during which he walked, danced, lay down on the wire, and saluted watchers from a kneeling position. Office workers, construction crews and policemen cheered him on.

Petit's World Trade Center stunt was the subject of Sandi Sissel's 1984 half-hour documentary, High Wire, which featured music from Philip Glass's Glassworks.

Mordicai Gerstein wrote and illustrated a children's book, The Man Who Walked Between The Towers (2003), which won a Caldecott Medal for his art. It was adapted and produced as an animated short film by the same title, directed by Michael Sporn and released in 2005, which won several awards.

The documentary film Man on Wire (2008), by UK director James Marsh, tells of Petit, his collaborators, and his 1974 WTC performance. It won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. It combines historical footage with re-enactment and has the spirit of a heist film. It won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, and the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2008. On stage with Marsh to accept the Oscar award, Petit made a coin vanish in his hands while thanking the academy "for believing in magic". He then balanced the Oscar by its head on his chin to cheers from the audience.^[13]

The same stunt was fictionalized in a biographical drama entitled The Walk (2015), directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit.

Author Colum McCann fictionalized Petit's appearance above New York as a unifying thread throughout his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin.

Petit has made dozens of public highwire performances in his career. For example, in 1986 he re-enacted the crossing of the Niagara River by Blondin for an IMAX film. In 1989, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, mayor Jacques Chirac invited him to walk an inclined wire strung from the ground at the Place du Trocadéro to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, crossing the Seine.

Petit briefly headlined with the Ringling Brothers Circus, but preferred staging his own performances. During his stint with the circus and a practice walk, he suffered his only fall, from 45 feet (14 m), breaking several ribs. He says he has never fallen during a performance. "If I had, I wouldn't be here talking about it."^[14]

Petit regularly gives lectures and workshops internationally on a variety of topics and subjects. He single-handedly built a barn in the Catskill Mountains using the methods and tools of 18th-century timber framers.^[15] In 2011, he published his eighth book, A Square Peg. He has also created an ebook for TED Books, entitled Cheating the Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist. Petit divides his time between New York City, where he is an artist in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and a hideaway in the Catskill Mountains.

Among those who have associated with some of his projects are such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Werner Herzog, Annie Leibovitz, Miloš Forman, Volker Schlöndorff, Twyla Tharp, Peter Beard, Marcel Marceau, Paul Auster, Paul Winter, Debra Winger, Robin Williams and Sting.^{[citation needed]}

Director James Signorelli assisted with creation of Petit's book To Reach the Clouds (2002), about the Twin Towers walk.^[16] Petit not only wrote about his feat, and events that led to the performance, but also expressed his emotions following the September 11 attacks, during which the Twin Towers were destroyed. He wrote that on that morning, "My towers became our towers. I saw them collapse – hurling, crushing thousands of lives. Disbelief preceded sorrow for the obliteration of the buildings, perplexity descended before rage at the unbearable loss of life."^[17] Petit paid tribute to those who were killed and supported rebuilding the towers, promising that "When the towers again twin-tickle the clouds, I offer to walk again, to be the expression of the builders' collective voice. Together, we will rejoice in an aerial song of victory."^[17] However, a different complex of buildings has been developed on the site, and does not offer this opportunity.

• James Parks Morton Interfaith Award
• Streb Action Maverick Award
• The Byrdcliffe Award

• The song, "Man on Wire" by the band 27 is a tribute to Philippe Petit.^[23]
• The song, "Sleepwalking," by Danish composer Ste van Holm is a tribute to Petit's World Trade Center walk.^[24]
• The Low Anthem's song, "Boeing 737", from their 2011 album Smart Flesh, refers to Petit's Twin Towers walk.^[25]
• American rock band Incubus used a photo of Petit as the cover art for their album, If Not Now, When? (2011).
• Colum McCann's National Book Award-winning novel, Let the Great World Spin (2009), features Petit's Twin Towers walk as its opening passage and a centrepiece to which numerous characters are connected.
• "Funambulist", a song by American metal band Cormorant, is about his walk between the Twin Towers.^[26]
• The song "Step Out Of The Void" by musician Howard Moss is a tribute to Philippe Petit, in the album Outside the Pale (2013).^[27]
• The song "Man On A Wire" by The Script on their fourth album, No Sound Without Silence, is influenced by Petit's highwire legacy.
• The song "Stand Up Comedy" by U2 on their twelfth album, No Line on the Horizon, references "The wire is stretched in between our two towers".
• Petit was the inspiration for the 5th Anniversary 9/11 cover of The New Yorker magazine (11 September 2006), "Soaring Spirit", by John Mavroudis (concept) and Owen Smith (art). That cover was named Cover of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME).^[28] The two-part cover was a first for The New Yorker.
• He's briefly referenced by Spider-Man in the Marvel comic Amazing Spider-Man Annual #10 (1976).

• Harry Gardiner
• Dan Goodwin
• Ivan Kristoff
• Owen Quinn
• Alain Robert
• The Flying Wallendas
• George Willig