Mastroianni made his screen debut as an uncredited extra in "Marionette" (1939) when he was fourteen, and made intermittent minor film appearances until landing his first big role in "Atto d'accusa" (1951). Within a decade he became a major international celebrity, starring in "Big Deal on Madonna Street" (1958); and in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (1960) playing a disillusioned and self-loathing tabloid columnist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome's decadent high society. Mastroianni followed "La Dolce Vita" with another signature role, that of a film director who, amidst self-doubt and troubled love affairs, finds himself in a creative block while making a film in Fellini's "8½" (1963).