Actress Maria Schneider dies

PARIS: French actress Maria Schneider, whose role as Marlon Brando`s lover in "Last Tango in Paris" won her lifelong fame but also an image that she found difficult to shake off, died on Thursday. She was 58.French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand called Schneider "a great artist" and saluted her ability to convey ambiguity on the screen, at once seductive and enigmatic, when working with directors like Rene Clement and Bernardo Bertolucci. "She remains the singular image of today`s woman, one of those living conduits of female liberty who is eternally reconquering a new generation," he said in a statement. Le Figaro newspaper quoted her family as saying she had died on Thursday morning in Paris after a long illness. The daughter of French actor Daniel Gelin and a Parisian bookshop owner, Schneider was 19 when she was cast opposite Brando, who was 48. Bertolucci`s Last Tango in Paris was controversial at the time of its release in 1972 for its sexual content, and Schneider later struggled with her image as a sex symbol. In a 2007 interview with Britain`s Daily Mail newspaper, she said the Italian director was `over-rated`.—Reuters