Luka Rocco Magnotta (born Eric Cleiton Kirk Newman) was born on July 24, 1982, in Scarborough, Ontario, the son of Anna Yourkin and Donald Newman. He was the first of their three children. According to him, his mother was obsessed with cleanliness, would routinely lock her children out of the house, and once put her children's pet rabbits out in the cold to freeze to death. His father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1994, after which he divorced Magnotta's mother, leading Magnotta to move in with his grandmother, Phyllis.
Magnotta attended I. E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay. In 2003, he began to appear in gay pornographic videos, occasionally working as a stripper and an escort. He appeared as a pin-up model in a 2005 issue of Toronto's fab magazine, using the pseudonym Jimmy. In 2007, he was an unsuccessful competitor in OUTtv's reality series COVERguy. He has had multiple cosmetic surgeries, and had auditioned for the Slice network television show Plastic Makes Perfect in February 2008.
