HE’S the former altar boy who went on to become one of the world’s most famous porn stars, said to have “the devil between his legs”.
Since his debut performance in 1986, Rocco Siffredi has starred in more than 1,500 X-rated films and is believed to have bedded in excess of 5,000 people.
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Born Rocco Antonio Tano, in a sleepy Italian seaport town, few would have predicted he would become one of porn’s biggest names – especially his mother, who “always dreamed” he would become a priest.
The star, who says he was “very sexually active” from the age of 11, was inspired after flicking through an X-rated magazine as a teen and sought a “different” type of career after growing up with parents who struggled financially.
“I might have become a priest… or a road-mender like my father, but when you see your parents struggling month after month what do you want from life?” Rocco said in his eponymously titled 2016 documentary.
“You want to be able to give them something better. That’s what I dreamed of. I told myself, ‘You must do something to help your mother’. So I used my c**k. ‘He’ll help me out,’ I told myself.”
Rocco, who boasts a 10-inch member, said being on X-rated sets was “like coming home” and his popular performances led him to be dubbed the ‘Italian Stallion’.
But his thrills on camera came at a price. Rocco claims to have “fallen to the deepest dark corners of the world” in the process – referring to mental struggles and a crippling sex addiction that threatened to derail his marriage multiple times.
Now the 59-year-old is the focus of a new seven-part drama, Supersex, which is based on his life and airs on March 6.
The Netflix show lifts the lid on his unusual path to fame – from the childhood tragedy that ‘shaped him’ to visiting sex workers three times a day while trying to quit the industry.
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Childhood tragedy
Rocco grew up in the quiet seaport town of Ortona a Mare, Chieti, and it was there, as his parents struggled to support their family, that he dreamed of escape.
His early life was marred by the tragic death of his brother – from an undisclosed cause – when Rocco was just six years old.
He later recalled it happened just days after the family hosted a birthday party at their home and in anger, he destroyed the leftover decorations.
Rocco said: “I’d come back from school. I could see my mother crying through the window. I go inside. My brother was lying on the bed, dead.
“There had been a birthday party at our house a few days earlier and the balloons were still there floating around. I burst every one of them.”
The porn star believes it was this tragedy that set him on the path to a less-than-ordinary career.
I told myself, ‘You must do something to help your mother’. So I used my c**k
Rocco Siffredi
He told Vice: “I have lived with a lot of suffering. When you are six years old and you lose your brother and see your mother become crazy due to pain, it’s impossible to stay normal.
“It’s impossible to forget this pain. All of a sudden, what you want to do is something that would make this life less and less hard.
“These tragedies are the reason I was ready to do anything.”
‘Completely crazy’
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Rocco says he was “very sexually active” from the age of 11 and recalls finding his first pornographic magazine, which had been discarded by truckers, two years later.
Flicking through the pages, the 13-year-old was inspired by a Seventies porn star nicknamed ‘Supersex’ and decided that was the career he wanted to pursue.
He recalled: “I saw that and said, ‘I want to do this business’. I called my older brother who lived in Paris and told him this, and he said, ‘You are crazy’.”
Rocco persisted, calling his brother again when he turned 16, only to be told he was “completely crazy” again.
Four years later, after a third call, his brother told him: “If you go to a swinger’s club, you are going to find some porn people who can help you.”
Rocco recalled: “I did that and it worked. People saw me having sex in front of everybody, and from that day on my life changed. I was in paradise.”
The [sex workers] would see my d***, say, ‘WOW, this is big, why don’t you do porn?’ F***, this happened to me several times when I went to hookers. I’d reply, ‘Yeah, I’ll think about it’
Rocco Siffredi
It was in a Parisian sex club that Rocco met Gabriel Pontello, editor of Supersex magazine, and explained that being a porn star was “the dream of my life”.
Pontello took a gamble on the unknown 20-something, inviting him to perform in front of 200 people in a studio.
He starred in his first film in 1986’s ‘Sodopunition pour dépravées sexuelles’, which translates to ‘Sodopunishment for sexually depraved people’.
While performing Rocco used the last name Siffredi – which he took from the character Roch Siffredi in the 1970 French gangster film Borsalino.
The youngster began to rise through the ranks but struggled with judgement from others, including being told he “would never get married” by his family doctor.
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In the late Eighties, Rocco tried to branch away – working in modelling for a stint and taking a break from the industry while dating former glamour model and actress Louise Germaine, who he lived with in Margate.
When the relationship fizzled out, he returned to porn and throughout the Nineties directed films too. But it was the productions he had starred in that helped to earn him a cult following.
“Rocco has far more power in this industry than any actress,” his collaborator and mentor, John Stagliano, once said.
Since his debut in 1986, Rocco has starred in more than 1,500 pornographic films, which earned him 39 Adult Video News awards, 29 other porn gongs and countless more nominations.
Prostitution secret
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In 1991, Rocco married the love of his life Rosa Caracciolo – a Hungarian model who would star with in the X-rated flicks including Tarzan X: Shame of Jane.
They would go on to have two sons together, Lorenzo and Leonardo, but it’s not been a smooth ride for the pair – often down to the actor’s sexual appetite.
I started to go to hookers two or three times a day. So three times a day hooker, hooker, hooker… because I was so used to having that much sex.
Rocco
In 2004, when Rocco retired from the industry, he battled severe sex addiction, claiming there was “some kind of devil in me… [that] sometimes sends me out of my mind”.
At the height of it he disappeared for days on end and regularly paid for the services of sex workers.
He recalled: “I tried to retire for my children. I wanted to stop performing in front of the camera by the time they were teenagers…
“I tried to do things on the other side of the camera in order not to hurt them. On the other side, I f****d up so many times.
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“First of all, I hurt myself by stopping. Secondly, I started to go to hookers two or three times a day. So three times a day hooker, hooker, hooker… because I was so used to having that much sex.
“The [sex workers] would see my d***, say, ‘WOW, this is big, why don’t you do porn?’ F***, this happened to me several times when I went to hookers. I’d reply, ‘Yeah, I’ll think about it.’”
Rocco continued to work behind the scenes in production and directed X-rated films but grew frustrated – especially as he felt some of the male talent he worked with were not up to his standard.
I know him very well and I love him for who and what he is
Rocco’s wife Rosa Caracciolo
By 2009, he had returned to being at the front of the camera and revealed it was his wife Rosa who encouraged him to do it.
Rocco recalled: “She told me, ‘You need no go back in front of the camera. If that is what you miss, and you’re seeing hookers to replace [performing], then what’s the point of retiring?’
“She said, ‘You decided to stop, we never asked you. So if you want to go back, just go back.’”
Supportive Rosa, who Rocco described as “the boss in the house”, seems to have been the glue that held the family together during many difficult moments.
Third ‘retirement’
While appearing on the Italian version of the reality TV show Survivor – L’isola Dei Famosi – Rocco came to the revelation that he must quit porn again, this time for the sake of his marriage.
It followed him being sent to the show’s Nude Beach, where he was in solitary confinement for a week.
In 2015, after leaving the show, Rocco reportedly told a friend: “I never felt so naked as I did then.
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“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, so I am going to leave porn.”
Wife Rosa seemed sceptical, responding that she looked forward to seeing “what the new version of him will be like”.
She added: “I know him very well and I love him for who and what he is.”
During that second ‘retirement’, Rocco went into several ventures including a ‘porn university’ in 2015 that would train people to enter the industry in a 15-day course in Hungary.
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He also launched an energy drink company and featured in several more reality TV shows.
Eventually Rocco backtracked on his retirement plans again -appearing in various pornographic films and even his own casting-based series.
In 2022, Rocco announced he would stop performing in scenes after cousin and long-term collaborator Gabriel Zero died from a heart attack.
Now the 59-year-old will be bracing himself for a new wave of fame and notoriety when Netflix’s dramatised biopic launches next month.
Only time will tell whether the exposure will lead to more career opportunities away, or draw the comeback king back into porn yet again.
“Never say never…” Rocco says: “I don’t say ‘I’m retiring’ anymore.”