Maria Schneider, the actor who helped introduce explicit to mainstream cinema, has died following a long illness. The 58-year-old is best known for her performance in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 drama Last Tango in Paris – a role that came to both define and destroy her acting career. Schneider was a teenage model when she landed the role opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. The film details the relationship between a young Parisian woman and a middle-aged American hotel manager and was notorious for an improvised, butter-assisted sex scene that resulted in a prohibitive X-rating in the US.
