Maria Schneider best known for playing Jeanne, opposite Marlon Brando, in the 1972 film, Last Tango in Paris. Died Thursday February 3, 2011. She was 58.

  Schneider performed several nude scenes in Last Tango in Paris, which was controversial at the time. In an interview in 2007, Schneider described Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci: "He was fat and sweaty and very manipulative, both of Marlon and myself, and would do certain things to get a reaction from me." As for her working relationship with Brando, she said that, while their relationship on the set was paternal, it was Brando who came up with the "butter scene" and it was only known to her just before filming it.

   The 1970s were turbulent years for Schneider, marked by drug addiction, overdoses, and a suicide attempt. By the 1980s, however, she had turned her life around: She has spoken of relationships with women before and, in 1975, went to a mental hospital in Rome and committed herself as a voluntary patient in order to be with her lover, photographer Joan Townsend. "I was very lucky – I lost many friends to drugs – but I met someone in 1980 who helped me stop. I call this person my angel and we've been together ever since. I don't say if it's a man or a woman. That's my secret garden. I like to keep it a mystery."