BRAD PITT OF PORN: Who is Italian smut icon Rocco Siffredi?

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To try and define porn legend Rocco Siffredi’s cultural impact would be a mug’s game.

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The Italian smut superstar could be called the Sir Laurence Olivier of orgasm, the Morgan Freeman of fornication and the James Cagney of copulation.

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Now, in one of the most highly anticipated streaming series for 2024, Netflix is releasing the original series called Supersex, inspired by Siffredi’s decades of antics. The seven-episode series was shot in Rome and is slated to drop on Jan. 24.

The script was written by – ironically – militant feminist Francesca Manieri.

“Supersex is the story of a man who takes seven episodes and 350 minutes to say ‘I love you,’ to accept that the demon in his body is compatible with love. To do this, he must expose the only part of him that we have never seen: his soul,” Manieri said in a press release.

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“Supersex talks about our present, Supersex talks about us. What does it mean to be a male? Are we still able to reconcile sexuality and affectivity? These are the questions that, like a kaleidoscope, open up before us as we immerse ourselves in his incredible life until we lose our breath.”

So, just who is Rocco Siffredi, the director and star of more than 1,500 hardcore videos?

Born in 1964 in the coastal city of Ortona, where Canadians fought one of the most bitter battles of the Second World War, Siffredi became interested in porn when he saw skin magazines as a teenager.

With the dream of making it as a model, he moved to Paris in his early 20s and passed time at the City of Light’s raunchy sex clubs. He was discovered by a French porn impresario Gabriel Pontello, who introduced the young Italian to producers.

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Siffredi – who took his name from Alain Delon’s character, Roch Siffredi, in the 1970 French gangster film Borsalino – made his sexxx-rated debut in the 1986 skin flick, Sodopunition pour depravees sexuelles (Sodopunishment for sexually depraved people).

“Hardcore was what I wanted to do as a kid. I started in 1985 in Paris, when the videocassette was not yet (the primary genre); at the time, hardcore films were only shown in cinemas and it was therefore very difficult to know the producers of the films as it was ‘forbidden’ to approach this world,” Siffredi told an Italian magazine.

For a time in the late 1980s, Siffredi again tried to make it as a fashion model in Paris but with the encouragement of porn starlet Teresa Orlowski.

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The man they called the Italian Stallion soon found himself starring in considerably raunchier fare, often featuring extreme rough sex.

Critics noted Siffredi’s “psychological intensity” and athleticism and he became a fan favourite.

With bonkbusters like Rocco Siffredi’s Hard Academy (Volumes 1-7), Buttman and Rocco Go to Montreal and Intercourse With the Vampire, the lurid legend has also become one of the wise sages of the business.

Siffredi often notes how tough the porn business is. He has, not surprisingly, been treated for sex addiction.

“The working rhythms are exhausting, so much so that the average life of an actress is only six months; for an actor, on the other hand, if he can manage himself without being fooled by the initial euphoria and the consequent physical decline, he can last longer,” Siffredi said.

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As a director, Siffredi said his biggest difficulty is finding male talent.

“There is a lot of demand for films but few (men) are really able to stay on a set and perform this profession. Instead, there are so many girls, also because of the short professional life of an actress,” he said.

Siffredi himself has retired and unretired from porn numerous times. Most recently in 2022, he said he was done performing but cheekily added, “I don’t say ‘I’m retiring’ anymore.”

What kind of personal life does a global porn sensation have? Remarkably stable.

He met his wife, Hungarian model Rózsa Tassi, at Cannes in 1993 and the pair later co-starred in Tarzan X: Shame of Jane. They have two sons.

During an earlier hiatus in 2015, Siffredi spoke of his love for his wife.

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He said: “Today I can see, my wife, she is the top priority. She deserves to have what she wanted from day one, to be with only me without sharing with other girls.”

She said: “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.”

The veteran pornographer has also been open about his desperate sex addiction. He told an Italian TV show that his carnal compulsion was “some kind of devil in me. (It) sometimes sends me out of my mind.”

In Supersex, Siffredi will be played by Italian star Alessandro Borghi (The Eight Mountains).

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@HunterTOSun

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