Kirk Morris

One of the many muscle men of peplum who dominated Italian sword-and-sandal epics in the early 60s, Italian Kirk Morris (born Adriano Bellini) was born in the late 1930s and plucked from the canals of Venice for his go at moviedom. A gondolier when discovered by an Italian movie producer, he was deemed a perfect speciman to showcase their spectacles and a fitting hero to help offset the silly special effects and ridiculously dubbed dialogue. If one must try to distinguish Kirk from the rest of the mythical bodybuilders (Steve Reeves, Alan Steel, Richard Harrison, Dan Vadis, Reg Park, Brad Harris, et al.), he often dyed his pompadour-styled hair blond and he had a slight, sulky resemblance to Elvis Presley. Other than that his stoic posings of Hercules, Samson, Maciste and the others were no better or worse. Once the genre had lost its audience in the mid-60s, Kirk maintained for a few more years in war stories and westerns, but eventually migrated to the United States where he went into the advertising field. Years later he returned to Italy and the movies -- this time as a producer.