Contrary to a report that was circulated last week by a major international news service, AVN Hall of Famer Rocco Siffredi has not retired from performing in adult videos. In a fax sent last Friday to Evil Angel, the company that distributes his videos, Siffredi said that he was not retiring.
Siffredi is, however, planning on cutting down of the number of his performances – and has spoken previously about retiring within a year or two.
On July 23, Agence France-Presse (AFP), an international newswire service similar to the Associated Press (AP), published and syndicated an article written by an unidentified member of their staff that Siffredi had announced his retirement from performing in adult videos during an interview with La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper.
What the AFP didn’t mention was that the interview in La Repubblica had taken place in January, and that earlier in the article Siffredi had stated that he would retire within two years.
When the AFP article first surfaced, AVN.com logged onto the Italian newspaper’s Website and discovered that on June 23 La Repubblica didn’t run an interview with Rocco Siffredi.However, the previous day the paper published an article about Anatomy of Hell, Siffredi’s latest collaboration with Catherine Breillat, a director who is known for challenging the boundaries of sexuality in film and has included hardcore scenes in her movies in the past. Siffredi’s retirement was not mentioned.
La Repubblica had published an interview (translated via Google) of Siffredi in January of this year, during which the possibility of retiring from his career as a performer over the next year or two was discussed. The quotes from the porn star in AFP’s story were originally published in that article.
The bureau chief of the AFP for the Los Angeles area wasn’t able to say how the mistake occurred, although it was he who had discovered the January origin of the quotes, and informed AVN.com that he had requested their European bureau for an explanation.
Last night director Axel Braun, who is Italian, spoke to Siffredi about his retirement and the recent media hype about surrounding it. "Here's the truth straight from his mouth: he will still perform until the end of 2005 (also because he alreadyshot most of the productions), then he will just direct and produce," Braun informed AVN.com via email. "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."
