Rocco Siffredi

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

Pornography career
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. 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. "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."

Retirements and comebacks
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. 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. 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."

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.

In mainstream media
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.

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

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

In June 2023, Siffredi featured in the Spring-Summer 2024 runway show of Milan-based fashion brand Dsquared², playing the role of a pornographic movie director.

Personal life
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.

During his initial retirement starting in 2004, Siffredi battled sex addiction and disappeared from home for days to have sex, including with trans women, seniors, and men. 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'." 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. "Today I can see, my wife, she is the top priority", he said in a press statement. "She deserves to have what she wanted from day one, to be with only me without sharing with other girls." Caracciolo told the press, "I know him very well and I love him for who and what he is. Let's see what the new version of him will be like."

Siffredi discussed his personal life in 2015 on the reality television show L'isola dei famosi (The Celebrity Island). Speaking of his sexuality, Siffredi discussed his sex addiction as emerging from "some kind of devil in me" and spoke of himself, "[It] sometimes sends me out of my mind." He discussed asking God for intervention from the spirit of his mother, whose photograph he always carries. He considers himself "a believer in God".

In popular culture

 * Siffredi was featured in the biographical documentary Rocco directed by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
 * Siffredi is referenced in the songs "Most People Are DJs" by the American band The Hold Steady, "Roko na Sterydach" ("Rocco on Steroids") by the Polish punk band Anti Dread, "Kundel Bury" and "Wina Satana" by the Polish band Arka Satana, "Rocco Siffredi" by the German rapper SSIO, "Padre Siffredi" by the Danish hardcore band Barcode.
 * Mark Holcomb and Matt Halpern, of progressive metal band Periphery, are avid fans of Siffredi's work and often quote lines from him on-stage.
 * Underground filmmaker Carlos Atanes stated that Stanley Kubrick, David Lean and Rocco Siffredi were his main film references, and said of Siffredi's work that "Agnes' scene in Rocco invades Poland or Gabriella Kerez' pool scene from True Anal Stories 9 are deeper than any Theo Angelopoulos' movie and show us the human inside more accurately than any Ingmar Bergman's film".
 * In the episode "Mère et patrie" of the French crime drama Braquo, Internal Affairs Inspector Roland Vogel jokes that his "tool" would make Rocco Siffredi "hide in shame".
 * Siffredi's line "It's only smells" from his scene with Helena White in Rocco's POV 5 became a viral meme in the early 2010s.
 * British band The Singing Pictures released a secret track named "Siffredi it" in reference to his porn acting style.
 * In Dave Hutchinson's 2014 spy novel Europe in Autumn, Siffredi's name is used as a cover name for an agent.
 * Siffredi is mentioned in the journal article "Pharmaco-pornographic Politics: Towards a New Gender Ecology" by Paul B. Preciado.
 * Actor Alessandro Borghi portrays Siffredi in the Netflix series Supersex.

Select pornographic

 * Buttman's Ultimate Workout (1990) 
 * Curse of the Cat Woman (1991)
 * Buttman's European Vacation (1991) 
 * New Wave Hookers 3 (1993)
 * Bend Over Brazilian Babes 2 (1994)
 * Buttman's Big Tit Adventure 3 (1995)
 * Buttman & Rocco's Brazilian Butt Fest (2000)
 * Buttman and Rocco Go to Montreal (2001)
 * Fashionistas (2002)
 * Rocco Smashes Tunes Back Doors In (2005)

AVN Awards

 * Won


 * Nominated

XBIZ Awards

 * Won


 * Nominated

XRCO Awards

 * Won


 * Nominated