Massimo Girotti

Known for ActingBorn 1918-05-18Died 2003-01-05Mogliano, Macerata, Italy

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.Read more

Movies & web series

The French Revolution

La coppia

The Mysterious Mr. Van Eyck

Idoli controluce

Mafia alla sbarra

Four of the Thundering Jet

Disperato addio

Le due tigri

Der Kardinal - Der Preis der Liebe

Un bel dì vedremo

From Night to Dawn

Kolossal - The Magnificent Macisti

My Body With Anger

La trovatella di Pompei

Fugitive in Trieste

La carne e l'anima

Harlem

La famiglia Brambilla in vacanza

Nights of the Teddy Boys

Vortice

Un reietto delle isole

Origins of the Mafia

Il segno del comando

Lieutenant Giorgio

Cinecittà, de Mussolini à la Dolce Vita

I pirati della Malesia

The French Revolution

La Bohème

Difficult Years

Rome 11:00

Asphalt

The Cossacks

Wolves in the Abyss

Luchino Visconti

Facing Windows

Altura

Mr. Klein

Obsession

The Monster

Senso

Theorem

Apparizione

Last Tango in Paris

In the Name of the Law

The Innocent

Cavalcata selvaggia

La cento chilometri

At the Edge of the City