by Hal Erickson
biography
A champion athlete before his 1939 screen debut, Italian actor Massimo Girotti gained popularity in virile action roles. Long before Kirk Douglas, Girotti played Spartacus in the same-named 1952 European historical epic. He also showed up in such brooding melodramas as Ossessione (1942), an unauthorized Italian version of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. Massimo Girotti later essayed character roles, notably in 1971's The Red Tent and 1972's Last Tango in Paris.
