‘Last Tango in Paris’ star Maria Schneider, 58, dies after illness

PARIS —  Maria Schneider, the French actress who was Marlon Brando’s young co-star in the steamy 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 racy “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.

Full of explicit sex scenes, “Last Tango” was banned in Italy for obscenity for nearly two decades, returning to cinemas there only in 1989.

In the United States, the movie still has an NC-17 rating for its sexual content, meaning it can’t be seen by children under 17 years of age.