For me, he was more like a father figure and I a daughter. Many believed that the sex scenes between Brando and Schneider were for real, but she insists: "Not at all. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. "I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. "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 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. "They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry. The truth is it was Marlon who came up with the idea," she says. "That scene wasn't in the original script. They engage in some steamy clinches, the most famous involving Schneider face down on the apartment floor while Brando applies butter to her nether regions and performs a sex act on her. They have a passionate affair knowing nothing about one another (Paul insists they don't even reveal their names), with a tragic ending. There she chances upon Paul (Brando), an American expatriate whose wife has committed suicide. In the film, Schneider plays Jeanne, a girl engaged to a somewhat annoying filmmaker, Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who goes to view an apartment in Paris. "Now, though, I can look at the film and like my work in it." "I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol - I wanted to be recognised as an actress and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown. People thought I was like the girl in the movie, but that wasn't me. Marlon later said that he felt manipulated, and he was Marlon Brando, so you can imagine how I felt. Some mornings on set he would be very nice and say hello and on other days, he wouldn't say anything at all. "He was fat and sweaty and very manipulative, both of Marlon and myself, and would do certain things to get a reaction from me. "I think Bertolucci is over-rated and he never really made anything after Last Tango that had the same impact. "I watched it again three years ago after Marlon died and it seems kitsch," she exclaims. Watching the film now with its over-wrought score, its scenes replete with meaningful silences and its sexual content, much of Last Tango, unlike Schneider, has aged. People today are used to such things but when the film opened in 1972, it was scandalous."
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"However, I never went naked in a movie again after Last Tango, even though I was offered many such roles. "People still recognise me in the street and say I haven't changed, which is good. "Marlon was shy about his body, but nudity wasn't a problem for me in those days as I thought it was beautiful," she says, her voice husky and smoke-tinged. The baby-faced prettiness is still there, if a little more knowing these days, her long, curly hair is pinned up and her face devoid of make-up. Schneider lives in Paris, and at 55, retains the enviable figure that she so magnificently paraded, mostly nude, in Last Tango. I've made 50 films in my career and Last Tango is 35 years old, but it's still the one that everyone asks me about," she says.