Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider — Biography

Maria Schneider was born on 27 March 1952 in Paris, the daughter of actor Daniel Gélin, and became a French film actress. She rose to international attention at age nineteen playing Jeanne opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), a role built around explicit and controversial scenes. Decades later she said she had not been warned in advance about a simulated assault filmed for the movie, calling the experience humiliating, and the disclosure prompted lasting debate about how the scene was shot. She also earned praise for her performance opposite Jack Nicholson in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger, though a habit of quitting productions midway left her sidelined by producers for a time. Schneider rebuilt her career and personal life during the early 1980s and spoke out publicly for better treatment of actresses on set. She kept working in film and television into the 2000s, appearing in Josiane Balasko's Cliente (2008) among her final roles, and died in Paris on 3 February 2011 following a lengthy illness.