Rocco Siffredi

Rocco Siffredi (born Rocco Antonio Tano; 4 May 1964) is an Italian pornographic actor, director and producer.

He took his stage name from the character Roch Siffredi played by Alain Delon in the French gangster film Borsalino (1970).

Siffredi briefly stepped away from porn in the late 1980s and worked as a fashion model, but returned to the business with the help of porn actress Teresa Orlowski.

Siffredi went on to perform in both plot-based and gonzo-style pornography, with styles of sex ranging from ordinary to extreme.

Siffredi's performances involving anal sex and anilingus, as well as rough sex and his psychological intensity and athleticism, earned him recognition and ultimately a cult following.

Through his collaboration with John Stagliano's Evil Angel studio and his own Budapest-based Rocco Siffredi Produzioni as both a performer and director, Siffredi became one of the most influential and recognizable personalities in pornography.

Known as the "Italian Stallion", Siffredi has starred in more than 1,300 pornographic films since 1986.

Siffredi is known for his rough style of pornography, often involving anal sex, spitting, slapping and choking, his collaboration with the pornographic studio Evil Angel, as well as his own productions.

Siffredi first got to the idea to work in the porn business after discovering a pornographic magazine as a teenager.

He moved to Paris in his early twenties and attended different sex clubs where he was eventually discovered by French porn actor and director Gabriel Pontello, who introduced him to other producers.

Siffredi made his pornographic debut in the 1986 film Sodopunition pour dépravées sexuelles.

Siffredi is married to Rosa Caracciolo (born Rózsa Tassi), a Hungarian model whom he met in 1993 in Cannes and with whom he performed two years later in Tarzan X: Shame of Jane. Together they have two sons, Lorenzo and Leonardo.

In 1997, Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese dedicated a song and a video, "Rocco e Le Storie Tese", to Siffredi.

Siffredi directed the video, in addition to appearing in it.

In 1999, he appeared in the controversial Catherine Breillat film Romance.

"Rocco has far more power in this industry than any actress", Stagliano commented in 2001.

Siffredi has credited Stagliano with being his mentor through all 30 years of his career.

Actress Bobbi Starr noted of Siffredi, "Any girl in the industry who has been with him... will tell you that they have done things with him that they [would] never do with anyone else."

Speaking of his female partners, Siffredi says, "I want to see emotion... fear... excitement... the eyes going up from being surprised."

His performance in this role was followed by a part specifically written for him by the same director in her 2003 film Anatomie de L'enfer (Anatomy of Hell), in which he played a gay man who became sexually involved with a woman.

Both films featured unsimulated sexual scenes involving Siffredi, although it is disputed whether he actually had intercourse with co-star Caroline Ducey in Romance (she said no, Siffredi said yes).

In June 2004, Siffredi declared that he would retire from performing in porn for the sake of his children, and instead focus on direction and production.

"My children are growing up", he said, "and I can no longer just say 'Dad is going to work to make money for the family'. They want to know more."

Regarding Siffredi's long career, Axel Braun commented, "The problem is that he's been trying for years to find an 'heir to the throne', but it's no easy task. He thought he found him in Nacho Vidal, but then Nacho went his own way."

Siffredi, while continuing to direct, was largely absent as an on-screen performer for nearly five years.

During his initial retirement starting in 2004, Siffredi battled sex addiction and disappeared from home for days to have sex, including with women, trans women, seniors, and men.

However, sexual frustration and disappointment as a director with his male talent and the state of the porn industry overall led Siffredi to return as a performer in 2009.

Upon his decision to return to on-screen pornographic performance in 2009, Siffredi recounted, "I spoke with my wife and she said it's my problem only, it doesn't belong to her and the boys. And she said, 'You decided to stop; we never asked you. So if you want to go back, just go back'."

In 2012, he made a cameo as himself in the successful French comedy Porn in the Hood.

Siffredi is also visible in non-pornographic roles on Italian television, including television commercials for Amica Chips, a snack food, which have spawned considerable controversy and have at one point been taken off the air, a Cielo show, Ci pensa Rocco, and a La5 docu-reality series, Casa Siffredi.

He later sang a duet with the band on the song "Un bacio piccolissimo" at the 63rd edition of the Sanremo Music Festival in 2013.

Despite renewed success, Siffredi announced his retirement once again in 2015, shortly after appearing on the Italian reality television show L'isola dei famosi (The Celebrity Island), which saw him stranded naked and alone on a beach for one week.

He was reported to have told a friend, "I never felt so naked as I did then. I was all alone and it gave me a lot of time to think about what is important. And I realised I don't want to lose my wife."

In 2015 he told the press, "More than a year ago I started to get uncomfortable in the front of the camera...Something inside of me has changed."

However, after a long period of intensive performing, with much time away from his home in Italy, Siffredi announced his retirement again in 2015 for the sake of his marriage.

Siffredi appeared as himself in a cameo in the 2018 Italian comedy film Natale a cinque stelle.

Siffredi would later continue to perform in various pornographic films and his own casting series. In 2020, his cousin and long-time collaborator Gabriel Zero died.

Siffredi subsequently announced the possibility of collaborating with his son Lorenzo on productions.

In late 2022, Siffredi announced that he had stopped performing in scenes, but stated that he had not retired and noted "I don't say 'I'm retiring' anymore" due to previous retirements and comebacks.

Siffredi is one of a few porn actors to enjoy crossover appeal and success with respect to other segments of the adult film industry, as well as some in mainstream media.