FAYE DUNAWAY & MARCELLO MASTROIANNI - Love & HEARTBREAK

THE ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS SPENT TWO YEARS EMBROILED IN A SECRET ROMANCE

Faye Dunaway would arrive at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport in disguise. Sometimes she wore a brunette wig and sunglasses; other times, she hid behind a coat and oversize hat. “I was basically doing what I hated with a man that I loved,” she confessed of hiding her two-year secret affair with Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. “We were like spies in love, always avoiding the paparazzi.”

The actress, who rose to fame playing an outlaw in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, confessed that their whirlwind, globe-hopping romance was more than a fling. “I was deeply in love with him,” said Faye, who dreamed of marriage and children with her continental lover, who was 17 years her senior. “He was a man like no one I’d ever met before, and he made me feel deeply protected.”

The pair met on the Venetian set of their 1968 tearjerker A Place for Lovers. In it, Faye plays a terminally ill fashion designer who embarks on an affair with an Italian race car driver — and struggles with whether to tell him that her time is running out. “When we first met, I was a bit starstruck,” Faye confessed. “He was gorgeous.”