The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain was shot over a week in March, when nights were still cold. According to Federico Fellini (in an interview with Costanzo Costantini), Anita Ekberg stood in the cold water in her dress for hours with no trouble. Marcello Mastroianni, on the other hand, had to wear a wetsuit beneath his clothes, and even that wasn't enough. Still freezing, he downed an entire bottle of vodka, so he was completely drunk while shooting the scene.
The film contributed the term "paparazzo" to the language. The term derives from Marcello's photographer friend Paparazzo. Federico Fellini took the name "Paparazzo", as he explained in a later interview, from the name of someone he met in Calabria (Southern Italy) where Greek names are still common. "Paparazzi" is the plural.
The film and especially the final beach scene were inspired by the infamous 1953 Wilma Montesi murder case. Montesi was a normal Italian woman from a proper family. Her dead body was found on a beach near Rome. The investigation exposed the drugs and sex orgies of Roman high society at the time. The murder remains unsolved as of today.
Asked how he got the idea for the film, Federico Fellini replied that one year the fashions made the women in Rome look like big flowers. Several extremely exaggerated costumes here and there in the film (such as two women guests' cloaks in the sequence of the party at the castle) point back to this original inspiration.
After Federico Fellini rejected the idea of Paul Newman for the lead role, Dino De Laurentiis suggested Gérard Philipe. He thought Marcello Mastroianni was "too soft and goody-goody; a family man rather than the type who flings women onto the bed."
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