French actress Maria Schneider, who played Marlon Brando’s lover in Last Tango in Paris, has died at the age of 58.
According to AFP news agency, she passed away in Paris yesterday after suffering from a long illness. She will be buried in the city’s Pere Lachaise cemetery.
Schneider shot to fame at the age of 19 after playing a French girl who meets an older American man (Brando) for casual sex in a Paris apartment. The film was banned in many countries for being too graphic, and director Bernardo Bertolucci said yesterday that he wished he could have apologised to Schneider for putting her through those scenes.
“Maria accused me of having robbed her of her youth and only today am I wondering whether there wasn’t some truth to that,” he told ANSA news agency.
“Together with the film, she gave American puritanism a shove. At that time, transgression was still possible and Maria could not resist the temptation to live it fully, body and soul, with all her beauty and joy.”
Having battled drug addiction in the 1970s, Schneider later returned to acting and last appeared in the 2008 French film Cliente.
