How Marlon Brando's Savage On-Set Abuse Drove Starlet Co-Star Into Spiral of Depression and Heroin Addiction Before She Died Virtually Forgotten — According To Tragic Actress' Cousin
Maria Schneider starred alongside Marlon Brando in 'Last Tango in Paris' and the film's harrowing sex scene ruined her career and her life.
June 30 2025, Published 8:00 p.m. ET
The cousin of a tragic Hollywood starlet abused by Marlon Brando has blamed the movie icon for her early death.
RadarOnline.com can reveal Vanessa Schneider has spoken out about the actor and Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, who teamed up with Maria Schneider in the classic movie Last Tango in Paris in 1973.
Exploited On Set
Maria was 'exploited by Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci when she was just 19.'
The movie is remembered for one particularly harrowing scene, which saw Maria exploited by the pair when she was just 19.
Maria had been filming Last Tango in Paris for 15 weeks, doing 14-hour shifts stretching into the night.
Bertolucci took Brando aside one morning and suggested a scene that wasn't in the script.
The men agreed that nothing should be hinted to Maria. As the director said later, he wanted the reaction of a girl, not an actress.
The cameras began to roll with the two actors lying on the floor.
Maria got hooked on drugs following the film after she was heavily mocked for sex scene.
Brando turned Maria onto her front, pulled down her jeans and shoved a mound of butter between her legs while thrusting his pelvis against her. Maria screamed before tearing down the set in distress.
She was never the same afterwards. Within days of the release of Last Tango in Paris, one of the 1970s' most shocking films, she was hooked on heroin and her life spiraled out of control as she was widely mocked for her shocking scene in the movie.
A waiter once asked with a wink if she would like some butter. A flight attendant put a pat of butter on her plate without her asking. A dairy manufacturer used her image without asking. She was abused in the street and physically attacked.
Even Vanessa felt it. In the school playground, classmates used to yell at her: "Pass me the butter!"
Gruesome Scene
Maria wasn't told what would happen to her in the scene as Brando and Bertolucci wanted to capture her genuine reaction.
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Maria had more film roles, including opposite Jack Nicholson in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger – one she got despite turning up half-cut to a meeting with the director at the George V hotel.
But she mostly, often angrily, refused requests to take her clothes off again and helped to burn her career by erratically criticizing colleagues and, once, being so high on drugs her lines were stripped from a script.
Vanessa described her cousin as "the perfect victim" and said she "died very alone" but would have applauded the MeToo movement.
The movement emerged in Hollywood shortly after her death in 2011 from cancer aged just 58, where she lay largely forgotten in hospice, where she drank champagne sent by Bridget Bardot, who took Maria under her wing during her fledgling days as an actress.
Vanessa added: “It's sad because she suffered a lot, because she died young, but at the same time, she also had beautiful moments, she had experiences, she met wonderful people, she was loved."
Maria spent the rest of her life after shooting the scene asking not to talk about it while condemning it nonetheless.
In 2007 she said: "I felt humiliated, and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci."
