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.

Filmography

• 2003Facing Windows — Simone / Davide Veroli
• 2000Der Kardinal - Der Preis der Liebe — Donato
• 1996Un bel dì vedremo — Emilio Venditti
• 1994The Monster — il condomino distinto
• 1993L'Amore Dopo — Ing. Staino
• Dalla notte all'alba — Vergiotti
• Der Erfolg ihres Lebens — Le comte di Falco
• 1989Affairs — Count Valery Du Terrail
• 1989The French Revolution — Envoyé du Pape
• The French Revolution — L'envoyé du Pape (« Les Années Lumière »)
• 1988La Bohème — The Old Pretender / Featuring
• Der Ochsenkrieg — Someier
• Christopher Columbus — Duca Medina Coeli
• Quo Vadis? — Aulus Plautius
• 1985The Berlin Affair — Werner von Heiden
• 1983Art of Love — Ovid
• 1981Passion of Love — Colonel
• 1980Un reietto delle isole — Tom Lingard
• 1977Kolossal - The Magnificent Macisti
• 1977L'Ultimo Aereo per Venezia — Marcello Masini
• 1976And Agnes Chose to Die — Palita
• 1976Mr. Klein — Charles, Florence's husband
• Origins of the Mafia — Viceroy Caracciolo
• 1976The Innocent — Count Stefano Egano
• 1975Cagliostro — Giacomo Casanova
• 1975Mark Shoots First — Il Questore Spaini
• 1975The Suspicious Death of a Minor — Gaudenzio Pesce
• 1974The Kiss — Eugenio Dazzi
• 1973Stateline Motel — Fred Norton
• 1973The Voracious Ones — Olmi
• 1972Baron Blood — Dr. Karl Hummel
• 1972Last Tango in Paris — Marcel
• 1972My Body With Anger — Gabriele
• Il segno del comando — George Powell
• Jekyll — John Utterson
• 1969La coppia — Guido
• 1969Medea — Creonte
• 1969The Red Tent — Giuseppe Romagna Manoja
• 1969The Sisters — Alex
• 1968Listen, Let's Make Love — Tassi
• 1968Theorem — Paolo, the Father
• 1967The Witches — Sportsman (segment "La strega bruciata viva")
• 1966The Mysterious Mr. Van Eyck — Friend of Charles
• 1965Idoli controluce — Ugo Sanfelice
• 1965Marco the Magnificent — Nicolo, Marco's Father
• 1963Gold for the Caesars — Pro-consul Caius Cornelius Maximus)
• 1963Mafia alla sbarra
• 1963The Shortest Day — Capitano alla finestra (uncredited)
• 1962Imperial Venus — Leclerc
• 1961Romulus and Remus — Tazio
• 1960Cavalcata selvaggia — Lorenzo
• 1960Letters of a Novice — Don Paolo Conti
• 1960The Cossacks — Tsar Alexander II
• 1960The Giants of Thessaly — Orfeo
• 1959Asphalt — Éric
• 1959Herod the Great — Ottaviano
• 1959La cento chilometri — Toccaceli
• 1959Nights of the Teddy Boys — Constantino's Father
• 1959The Head of a Tyrant — Holofernes
• 1959Wolves in the Abyss — Comandante
• 1958The Year Long Road — Chiacchiera (Naklapalo)
• 1957Goddess Of Love — Prassitele
• 1957It Happened in Rome — Ugo Parenti
• 1957La bestia humana — Pedro Sandoval
• 1957La trovatella di Pompei — Guglielmo Curti
• 1957Saranno uomini — Don Antonio
• 1955Disperato addio — dottor Andrea Pitti
• 1955Four of the Thundering Jet — Maggiore Montanari
• 1955Marguerite of the Night — Valentin
• 1954La tua donna — Sandro Ademari
• 1954Senso — Il Marchese Roberto Ussoni
• 1953A Husband for Anna — Andrea Grazzi
• 1953At the Edge of the City — Avv. Roberto Martini
• 1953Sins of Rome — Spartacus
• 1953Sul ponte dei sospiri — Marco Spada
• 1953The Love of a Woman — André Lorenz
• 1953Vortice — Dr. Guido Aureli
• 1952Fugitive in Trieste — Fred Nolan
• 1952Il segreto delle tre punte — Massimo Dal Colle
• 1952Leathernose — Doctor Marchal
• 1952Lieutenant Giorgio — Giorgio Biserta
• 1952Rome 11:00 — Nando the Unemployed
• 1951Behind Closed Shutters — Ingegnere Roberto
• 1950Duel Without Honor — Carlo
• 1950Land der Sehnsucht
• 1950Story of a Love Affair — Guido
• 1949Altura — Stanis Archena
• 1949Fabiola — Sebastian
• 1949In the Name of the Law — Il pretore Guido Schiavi
• 1948Difficult Years — Giovanni Piscitello
• 1948Lost Youth — Marcello Mariani
• 1948Woman Trouble — Paolo Bertoni
• 1947Christmas at Camp 119 — Nane, il veneziano
• 1947Fatalità — Vincenzo Masi
• 1947Shamed — Rocco
• 1947Tragic Hunt — Michele
• 1946A Day in the Life — Luigi Monotti
• 1946Desire — Nando Mancini
• 1945I dieci comandamenti — (segment "Ricordati di santificare le feste")
• 1945La carne e l'anima — Andrea
• 1945The Gates of Heaven — The blind youth
• 1943Apparizione — Franco
• 1943Harlem — Tommaso Rossi
• 1943Obsession — Gino Costa
• 1942A Pilot Returns — Lieutenant Gino Rossati
• 1941I pirati della Malesia — Tremal-Naik
• 1941La famiglia Brambilla in vacanza — Marco Sassoli
• 1941Le due tigri — Tremal-Naik
• 1941The Iron Crown — Arminio / King Licinio
• 1939Dora Nelson — Enrico

Appearances as themselves (3)

• 2021Cinecittà, de Mussolini à la Dolce Vita — Self (archive footage)
• 2009A Film that Paved the Way — Self
• 2002Luchino Visconti — Self (archive footage)