Massimo Girotti
Massimo Girotti (18 May 1918 – 5 January 2003) was an Italian film actor whose career spanned seven decades.
Born in Mogliano, in the province of Macerata, Girotti developed his athletic physique by swimming and playing polo. While studying engineering, he attracted the attention of Mario Soldati, who offered him a small part in the film Dora Nelson (1939), but it was not until later, in Alessandro Blasetti's La corona di ferro (The Iron Crown) (1941) and Roberto Rossellini's Un Pilota ritorna (A Pilot Returns) (1942), that he began to make an impression as a serious actor. In 1943 came a turning point in his career when Luchino Visconti cast him opposite the torrid Clara Calamai in Ossessione (Obsession), an earlier adaptation of the same novel on which Hollywood's The Postman Always Rings Twice is based. The film marked, in a sense, the birth of Italian neo-realism. Some of his notable post-war films include Caccia tragica (The Tragic Hunt) (1946) by Giuseppe De Santis and In nome della legge (1949) (In the Name of the Law) by Pietro Germi.
In 1950, he starred opposite Lucia Bosé in Michelangelo Antonioni's first full-length feature, Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair) (1950). In 1953, he played Spartacus in an Italian epic film known in the US as Sins of Rome and then, returned to work again for Visconti, in Senso (1954), giving perhaps the finest performance of his career. In the years which followed, he appeared in many mainly Italian films for directors such as Lizzani, Bolognini, Vittorio Cottafavi, Lattuada, but it was not until 1968 that he once again played a role worthy of his talents - that of the father in Pasolini's Teorema (Theorem) with Terence Stamp and Silvana Mangano. Two years later, Pasolini cast him as Creonte opposite Maria Callas in his Medea (1969). In 1972, he was in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. That same year he made a rare appearance in a horror film when he agreed to a supporting role in Baron Blood as a favor to its director Mario Bava.
He continued to act in character roles for the next thirty years. Some of the films he appeared in have been notable, including Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976) with Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau, Art of Love (1983) by Walerian Borowczyk, the 1985 television miniseries Quo Vadis?, Roberto Benigni's Il mostro (The Monster) (1994).
He died in Rome of a heart attack after having just completed his last film, Ferzan Özpetek's La Finestra di fronte (Facing Windows) (2003).
Source: Article "Massimo Girotti" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Known for
The Monster
il condomino distinto
In the Name of the Law
Il pretore Guido Schiavi
Art of Love
Ovid
Stateline Motel
Fred Norton
Woman Trouble
Paolo Bertoni
A Pilot Returns
Lieutenant Gino Rossati
La coppia
Guido
The Innocent
Count Stefano Egano
La tua donna
Sandro Ademari
Medea
Creonte
Last Tango in Paris
Marcel
Romulus and Remus
Tazio
Behind Closed Shutters
Ingegnere Roberto
The Berlin Affair
Werner von Heiden
The Red Tent
Giuseppe Romagna Manoja
From Night to Dawn
Vergiotti
La bestia humana
Pedro Sandoval
The Voracious Ones
Olmi
The Witches
Sportsman (segment "La strega bruciata viva")
Leathernose
Doctor Marchal
Theorem
Paolo, the Father
My Body With Anger
Gabriele
Christopher Columbus
Duca Medina Coeli
Mr. Klein
Charles, Florence's husband
Imperial Venus
Leclerc
Difficult Years
Giovanni Piscitello
The French Revolution
Envoyé du Pape
The French Revolution
L'envoyé du Pape (« Les Années Lumière »)
Baron Blood
Dr. Karl Hummel
Apparizione
Franco
Land der Sehnsucht
Quo Vadis?
Aulus Plautius
Lieutenant Giorgio
Tenente Giorgio Biserta
Il segno del comando
George Powell
L'Amore Dopo
Ing. Staino
Cagliostro
Giacomo Casanova
Passion of Love
Colonel
The Sisters
Alex
It Happened in Rome
Ugo Parenti
Fugitive in Trieste
Fred Nolan
Senso
Il Marchese Roberto Ussoni
Origins of the Mafia
Viceroy Caracciolo
The Giants of Thessaly
Orfeo
Fabiola
Sebastian
Herod the Great
Ottaviano
Facing Windows
Simone / Davide Veroli
Asphalt
Éric
Lost Youth
Marcello Mariani
Disperato addio
dottor Andrea Pitti
Preludio d'amore
Wolves in the Abyss
Comandante
Saranno uomini
Don Antonio
Tragic Hunt
Michele
Altura
Stanis Archena
The Head of a Tyrant
Holofernes
Jekyll
John Utterson
Marguerite of the Night
Valentin
Obsession
Gino Costa
Rome 11:00
Nando the Unemployed
Listen, Let's Make Love
Tassi
Idoli controluce
Ugo Sanfelice
The Shortest Day
Capitano alla finestra (uncredited)
Der Ochsenkrieg
Someier
Der Erfolg ihres Lebens
Le comte di Falco
Letters of a Novice
Don Paolo Conti
Marco the Magnificent
Nicolo, Marco's Father
Duel Without Honor
Carlo
Harlem
Tommaso Rossi
The Iron Crown
Arminio / King Licinio
Story of a Love Affair
Guido
The Suspicious Death of a Minor
Gaudenzio Pesce
The Cossacks
Tsar Alexander II
La cento chilometri
Toccaceli
I dieci comandamenti
(segment "Ricordati di santificare le feste")
And Agnes Chose to Die
Palita
The Kiss
Eugenio Dazzi
Goddess Of Love
Prassitele
Cinecittà, de Mussolini à la Dolce Vita
Self (archive footage)
Mark Shoots First
Il Questore Spaini
The Gate of Heaven
The blind youth
The Love of a Woman
André Lorenz
Cavalcata selvaggia
Lorenzo
A Husband for Anna
Andrea Grazzi
Mafia alla sbarra
Four of the Thundering Jet
Maggiore Montanari
The Year Long Road
Chiacchiera (Naklapalo)
Affairs
Count Valery Du Terrail
Sins of Rome
Spartacus
Luchino Visconti
Self (archive footage)
Desire
Nando Mancini
Dora Nelson
Enrico
Sul ponte dei sospiri
Marco Spada
Vortice
Dr. Guido Aureli
At the Edge of the City
Avv. Roberto Martini
Der Kardinal - Der Preis der Liebe
Donato
A Day in the Life
Luigi Monotti
Gold for the Caesars
Pro-consul Caius Cornelius Maximus)
Christmas at Camp 119
Nane, il veneziano
Fatalità
Vincenzo Masi
Il segreto delle tre punte
Massimo Dal Colle
I pirati della Malesia
Tremal-Naik
La carne e l'anima
Andrea
Un bel dì vedremo
Emilio Venditti
La famiglia Brambilla in vacanza
Marco Sassoli
La trovatella di Pompei
Guglielmo Curti
Le due tigri
Tremal-Naik
Nights of the Teddy Boys
Constantino's Father
La Bohème
The Old Pretender / Featuring
Un reietto delle isole
Tom Lingard
The Mysterious Mr. Van Eyck
Friend of Charles
L'Ultimo Aereo per Venezia
Marcello Masini