Sergio Ciani (7 September 1935 – 5 September 2015), best known as Alan Steel, was an Italian bodybuilder and actor. Born in Rome, Ciani started his career as a

stuntman A stunt performer, often called a stuntman or stuntwoman and occasionally stuntperson or stunt-person, is a trained professional who performs daring acts, often as a career. Stunt performers usually appear in films or on television, as opposed ...

; then he became the

body double In filmmaking, a double is a person who substitutes for another actor such that the person's face is not shown. There are various terms associated with a double based on the specific body part or ability they serve as a double for, such as stunt ...

for

Steve Reeves Stephen Lester Reeves (January 21, 1926 – May 1, 2000) was an American professional bodybuilder and actor. He was famous in the mid-1950s as a movie star in Italian-made sword-and-sandal films, playing the protagonist as muscular characters ...

in ''

Hercules Unchained ''Hercules Unchained'' ( , "Hercules and the Queen of Lydia") is a 1959 Italian-French epic fantasy feature film starring Steve Reeves and Sylva Koscina in a story about two warring brothers and Hercules' tribulations in the court of Queen Omph ...

'' and in ''

The Giant of Marathon ''The Giant of Marathon'' () is a 1959 international co-production sword and sandal film, loosely based on the Battle of Marathon. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur and Mario Bava. It starred Steve Reeves as Phillipides. The film was a co-prod ...

'', in which he also played a minor role. In the early 1960s he adopted the stage name Alan Steel and starred the leading roles in a number of

peplum film Sword-and-sandal, also known as peplum (: pepla), is a subgenre of largely Italian-made historical, mythological, or biblical epics mostly set in the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Middle Ages. These films attempted to emulate the big-budget Holl ...

s with good commercial success. He had the distinction as being one of the very few native Italians to play the heroes of the peplum features. In addition to playing roles named either Hercules, Ursus, or Samson, he played Robin Hood in the 1976 adventure film ''Storia di arcieri, pugni e occhi neri''. With the decline of the genre Steel thinned out his appearances, until his retirement at the end of the 1970s. Ciani died in his sleep at his house in Ostia, Rome, at age 79, just two days short of what would have been his 80th birthday.

Partial filmography

* ''

Herod the Great Herod I or Herod the Great () was a History of the Jews in the Roman Empire, Roman Jewish client king of the Herodian kingdom of Judea. He is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea. Among these works are the rebuilding of the ...

'' (1958) as Palace Guard (uncredited) * ''

'' (1959) as Megreo * ''

'' (1959) as Euros * ''

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

'' (1961) as Macigno aka Hercules * ''

The Fury of Hercules ''The Fury of Hercules'' () is a 1962 peplum film written and directed by Gianfranco Parolini. Plot Hercules is reached by the slave Daria, who informes him that his country has fallen into the hands of the tyrant Meniste. Hercules follows Dar ...

'' (1962) as Kaldos * '' The Rebel Gladiators'' (1962) as Commodus * ''

The Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israel ...

'' (1962) * ''

Samson and the Slave Queen ''Samson and the Slave Queen'' () is a 1963 Italian '' peplum'' directed by Umberto Lenzi. It was originally made as a Maciste film in Italy, in which the fabled strongman meets Zorro. It was redubbed into a "Samson" movie for distribution in the ...

'' (1963) as Samson (in U.S. version) / Maciste * ''

Hercules and the Masked Rider ''Hercules and the Masked Rider'' (, also known as ''Goliath and the Masked Rider'') is a 1963 Italian peplum film written and directed by Piero Pierotti and starring Alan Steel and Mimmo Palmara. A crossover film, it is set in the seventeenth c ...

'' (1963) as Golia / Paco / Hercules * '' Hercules and the Black Pirates'' (1964) as Samson * '' Hercules Against Rome'' (1964) as Ercole * ''

Hercules Against the Moon Men ''Hercules Against the Moon Men'' (, "Maciste and the Queen of Samar") is a 1964 Franco-Italian international co-production sword and sandal film. It was directed by Giacomo Gentilomo in his final film and stars Alan Steel and Jany Clair. The En ...

'' (1964) as Maciste / Hercules * '' Hercules and the Treasure of the Incas'' (1964) as William Smith / Samson * ''

Samson and His Mighty Challenge ''Samson and His Mighty Challenge'' is a 1964 Italian sword-and-sandal film, released in 1965 at the very tail end of the peplum craze. Its original title was ''Ercole, Sansone, Maciste e Ursus gli invincibili'' (''Hercules, Samson, Maciste, and ...

'' (1964) as Hercules * '' 3 Avengers'' (1964) as Ursus * '' A... For Assassin'' (1966) as Giacomo * ''Un colpo da re'' (1967) as The Swede * ''Addio mamma'' (1967) as Franco Rinaldi, Patrizia's husband * ''Sapevano solo uccidere'' (1968) as Pedro * ''La furia dei Khyber'' (1970) as Capitano Miller * '' Fasthand'' (1973) as Cpt. Jeff Madison * '' The Little Cowboy'' (1973) as Monty Donovan * ''Dagli archivi della polizia criminale'' (1973) as Larry Brenton * ''Storia di arcieri, pugni e occhi neri'' (1976) as Robin Hood * ''Korkusuz cengaver'' (1976) as Korsan (uncredited) * ''Io tigro, tu tigri, egli tigra'' (1978) * ''Baby Love'' (1979) (final film role)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Steel, Alan 1931 births 2015 deaths 20th-century Italian male actors Italian bodybuilders Italian male film actors Male actors from Rome People associated with physical culture