PARIS: Maria Schneider, the French actress who was Marlon Brando's young co-star in the controversial 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris,” has died at age 58. Schneider died in Paris on Thursday “following a long illness,” a representative of the Act 1 talent agency said, but declined to provide details. Schneider was 19 when she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's “Last Tango in Paris.” In it, she played Jeanne, a young Parisian woman who takes up with a middle-aged American businessman, played by Brando. Though Schneider appeared in more than two dozen films throughout her career, none would bring her even a fraction of the success of “Last Tango.” In 1975, Schneider featured in Michelangelo Antonioni's “The Passenger,” a wandering existential drama starring Jack Nicholson as a frustrated and erratic war correspondent. Her last movie, “The Key,” by director Guillaume Nicloux, came out in 2007.
