Maria Schneider

Maria-Hélène Schneider (27 March 1952 – 3 February 2011), known professionally as Maria Schneider, was a French actress.

Gélin never recognised Schneider as his daughter, though he publicly acknowledged his paternity in the 1970s.

Schneider was first brought up by her mother in a town near the French border with Germany.

Eventually, her mother was unwilling to attend to her and entrusted her to a nurse for two years.

Maria Schneider later lived for several years with her maternal uncle Michel Schneider and his wife.

She reconnected with her biological father when she was sixteen, by visiting him unannounced.

Schneider later said that she had met Gélin only "three times".

She was 18 when she had her first break in 1970, appearing in Madly, starring Alain Delon.

In the 1970s, criminal proceedings were brought against Bertolucci in Italy for obscenity; the film was sequestered by the censorship commission and all copies were ordered destroyed.

An Italian court revoked Bertolucci's civil rights for five years and gave him a four-month suspended prison sentence.

In 1972, at the age of 19, she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, but being traumatised by a rape scene and hounded by unsavoury publicity negatively affected her subsequent career.

This was followed by relatively substantial roles in films such as Roger Vadim's Hellé (1972); The Old Maid (La Vieille Fille) (1972) with Philippe Noiret; Dear Parents (Cari genitori) (1973) opposite Florinda Bolkan and Catherine Spaak; and Dance of Love (1973), based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler.

Schneider gained international renown for her performance at the age of 19 in the sexually explicit Last Tango in Paris (1972), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

In a graphic portrayal of anonymous sex with an older man, she performed several nude scenes, including a rape scene that Bertolucci did not reveal to her until just before the filming of it.

Although Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975) showcased her abilities, a reputation for walking out of films mid-production resulted in her becoming unwelcome in the industry.

In 1978 the Appeals Court of Bologna ordered three copies of the film to be preserved in the national film library with the stipulation that they could not be viewed, until Bertolucci was later able to re-submit it for general distribution with no cuts.

Schneider said that due to her experience with the film – and her treatment afterward as a sex symbol rather than as a serious actress – she decided never to work nude again.

However, she re-established stability in her personal and professional life in the early 1980s, and became an advocate for equality and improving the conditions actresses worked under.

(The latter film is also known as Merry-Go-Round, which is distinct from Schneider's 1981 film of the same name directed by Jacques Rivette.)

In 2001, Schneider commented:

"Last Tango ... first major role. In fact, it's a total coincidence. I was friends with Dominique Sanda. She would make the film with Jean-Louis Trintignant, but she was pregnant. She had a large picture with her of both of us. Bertolucci saw it. He made me do a casting ... I regretted my choice since the beginning of my career would have been sweeter, quieter. For Tango, I was not prepared. People have identified with a character that was not me. Butter, about saucy old pigs ... Even Marlon with his charisma and class, felt a bit violated, exploited a little in this film. He rejected it for years. And me, I felt it doubly."

In 2007, she said:

"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 continued acting in film and TV until a few years before she died in 2011 after a long illness.

Schneider was born in Paris to Daniel Gélin, a French actor, and Marie-Christine Schneider from Romania, a model who ran a bookshop in Paris.

Gélin was married to actress and producer Danièle Delorme during the affair and his lack of father-level involvement was deeply felt by his daughter.

In 2013, Bertolucci said he had withheld the information from her to generate a real "reaction of frustration and rage".

Brando alleged that Bertolucci had wanted the characters to have real sex, but Brando and Schneider both said it was simulated.

Actress Jessica Tovey, writing in The Guardian, argued that Bertolucci's defense of pursuing an artistic vision was "bogus" and that what occurred was "a violation."

Tovey also observed that it is difficult to imagine the "roles being reversed; Brando being brutalized only to discover midway through filming that Schneider and Bertolucci had conspired to add an element of humiliation."

Her cousin Vanessa Schneider wrote, in a biographical book published in 2018, that Maria Schneider had actually been in regular contact with her father during her late teens.

It was he who first brought her to a film set.

Over the years, Maria Schneider and her biological father met irregularly.

She eventually bonded with her half-siblings (who had been unaware of her until after she starred in Last Tango in Paris), especially her half-sister Fiona Gélin.

Her half-brother Xavier Gélin was also an actor.

As a teenager, Schneider loved films, going to the cinema up to four times a week.

She left home at age 15 after an argument with her mother and went to Paris, where she made her stage-acting debut that same year.

She eked out a living as a film extra and a model.

While working on a film set, she met Brigitte Bardot, who having worked with her father on several productions (a father who refused to help his daughter), was "horrified" that the young actress was homeless and offered her a room in her house.

Through Bardot, Schneider met people in the film business, including Warren Beatty, who was greatly impressed by Schneider, and introduced her to the William Morris Agency.