Faye Dunaway "The Extraordinary Seaman", a comedy adventure directed by John Frankenheimer and also starring David Niven that she shot right after "Bonnie and Clyde", was released to poor reviews and proved to be a commercial failure. Despite protests from her agent, Dunaway turned down a lot of high-profile projects in order to spend time with Mastroianni. In 1970, Dunaway took a supporting role as a favor to Arthur Penn in his western, "Little Big Man". In a rare comic role, Dunaway played the sexually frustrated wife of a minister who helps raise and seduce a boy raised by Native Americans, played
Faye Dunaway famed for a scene where Dunaway and McQueen play a chess game and silently engage in heavy seduction of each other across the board. Following the completion of "The Thomas Crown Affair", Dunaway began filming Vittorio de Sica's romantic drama, "A Place for Lovers" (1968), with Marcello Mastroianni, in which she played a terminally ill American fashion designer in Venice who has a whirlwind affair with a race car driver. Although Dunaway had always wanted to avoid romances with her co-stars, she began a love affair with Mastroianni that lasted for two years. The film was an artistic disappointment and