MARIA'S LAST TANGO

MARIA SCHNEIDER, the French actress whose sex scenes with Marlon Brando in
“LAST TANGO IN PARIS” set a new standard for explicitness on screen, died on Thursday in Paris. She was 58.

A spokesman for her agency, Act 1, said she had died after a long illness but provided no other details.

Schneider performed numerous full-frontal nude scenes in Last Tango in Paris, which were controversial at the time.

In a 2007 interview with the Daily Mail, Schneider described Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci: "He was fat and sweaty and very manipulative, both of Marlon and myself, and would do certain things to get a reaction from me." As for her working relationship with Brando, she said that, while their relationship on the set was paternal, it was Brando who came up with the "butter scene" and it was only known to her just before filming it:
"I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that. Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take."



She and Brando remained friends until his death, although they did not speak of the movie "for a while." She also said that her experience with the film — and her treatment as a sex symbol rather than as a serious actress — motivated her to never do films with nude scenes again. Schneider also appeared in films such as The Passenger and Jane Eyre.

Schneider was born Marie Christine Gélin, the daughter of French actor Daniel Gélin and Romanian-born Marie-Christine Schneider, who ran a bookstore in Paris. In 1974, Schneider came out as bisexual.

In early 1976, she abandoned the film set of Caligula and checked herself into a mental hospital in Rome for several days with a woman she described as her lover.

The 1970s were turbulent years for Schneider, marked by drug addiction, overdoses, and a suicide attempt. By the 1980s, however, she had turned her life around:
"I was very lucky — I lost many friends to drugs — but I met someone in 1980 who helped me stop. I call this person my angel and we've been together ever since. I don't say if it's a man or a woman. That's my secret garden. I like to keep it a mystery."


"I had to think about what to say about Maria and I will just say this: she was, like myself, exploited in a sexual manner that she never fully came to grips with. I will miss my good friend. Godspeed."
~ Joe Dallesandro