Who can forget the cinema image of Anita Ekberg, enormous in black velvet, wading in the Trevi fountain in La Dolce Vita? - a title which itself has become international shorthand for the hedonistic life. At 72, Fellini is the most honoured living film-maker. He won the Academy Award for best Foreign Film on four separate occasions and has repeatedly won every major international film prize at the Cannes, Venice, Berlin and New York film festivals. His life spans the growth of modern Europe; he lived through the rise of fascism, flower power, feminism, urban terrorism - all condensed into his films with irony and great skill. This full biography will draw on interviews with Fellini himself, his relatives and collaborators, as well as letters, diaries, sketchbooks and early drafts of screenplays.