Maria Schneider (actress) a room in her house. Through Bardot, Schneider met people in the film business and Bardot introduced her to the William Morris Agency. She was 18 when she had her first break in 1970, appearing in "Madly", starring Alain Delon. 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. She performed several nude scenes in a graphic portrayal of anonymous sex with an older man. In an interview in 2007, Schneider said of Bertolucci: "He was fat and sweaty and very manipulative, both of
Maria Schneider (actress) "I am an actress, not a prostitute!") and checked herself into a mental hospital in Rome for several days to be with her lover, photographer Joan Townsend. This, coupled with her refusal to perform nude, led to Schneider's dismissal from the film. (She was replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy.) Around this time and towards the end of the decade, Schneider also turned down or dropped out of productions such as Luis Buñuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire" (1976), due to creative differences (Buñuel famously replaced her with not one but two actresses for the same role), and Franco Zeffirelli's television