Through collaboration with John Stagliano's Evil Angel studio and then his own Budapest-based Rocco Siffredi Produzioni as both a performer and director, Siffredi became one of the most powerful and recognizable personalities in pornography.
"Rocco has far more power in this industry than any actress," Stagliano commented in 2001. Siffredi has credited Stagliano with being his mentor through all 30 years of his career. In June 2004, Siffredi declared that he would retire from performing in porn for the sake of his children, and instead focus on direction and production. "My children are growing up," he said, "and I can no longer just say 'Dad is going to work to make money for the family.' They want to know more." Regarding Siffredi's long career, Axel Braun commented, "The problem is that he's been trying for years to find an 'heir to the throne', but it's no easy task. He thought he found him in Nacho Vidal, but then Nacho went his own way". Siffredi, while continuing to direct, was largely absent as an on-screen performer for nearly five years.
However, sexual frustration and disappointment as a director with his male talent and the state of the porn industry overall led Siffredi to return as a performer in 2009. Despite renewed success, Siffredi announced his retirement once again in 2015, shortly after appearing on the Italian reality television show L'Isola dei Famosi ( Celebrity Island) which saw him stranded naked and alone on a beach for one week. He was reported to have told a friend, "I never felt so naked as I did then. 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." He later told the press, "More than a year ago I started to get uncomfortable in the front of the camera.Something inside of me has changed." However, he has continued performing sex in titles such as Rocco One on One and Rocco's Intimate Castings. will tell you that they have done things with him that they never do with anyone else." Style of pornography Īctress Bobbi Starr noted of Siffredi, "Any girl in the industry who has been with him. Siffredi being interviewed by Rocco Tanica at Lucca Comics & Games 2016 the eyes going up from being surprised." In mainstream media Speaking of his female partners, Siffredi says, "I want to see emotion. Siffredi is one of a few porn actors to enjoy crossover appeal and success with respect to other segments of the adult film industry, as well as some in mainstream media. In 1999, he appeared in the controversial Catherine Breillat film Romance. His performance in this role was followed by a part specifically written for him by the same director in her 2003 film Anatomie de L'enfer ( Anatomy of Hell), in which he played a gay man who became sexually involved with a woman. Both films featured unsimulated sexual scenes involving Siffredi, although it is disputed whether he actually had intercourse with co-star Caroline Ducey in Romance (she said no, Siffredi said yes). In 2012, he made a cameo as himself in the successful French comedy Porn in the Hood. Siffredi is also visible in non-pornographic roles on Italian television, including television commercials for Amica Chips, a snack food, which have spawned considerable controversy and have at one point been taken off the air, a Cielo show, Ci pensa Rocco, and a La 5 docu-reality series, Casa Siffredi. In 1997, Italian band Elio e Le Storie Tese dedicated a song and a video, "Rocco e Le Storie Tese", to Siffredi.