In this 1972 file photo originally provided by United Artists, Marlon Brando, left, and Maria Schneider are shown in a scene from “The Last Tango in Paris”. A representative of the Act 1 agency said Schneider died in Paris on Thursday, following a long illness. She was 58. -AP Photo

PARIS: Maria Schneider, the French actress who was Marlon Brando's young co-star in the steamy 1972 film ''Last Tango in Paris,'' has died at age 58.

Schneider died in Paris on Thursday ''following a long illness,'' a representative of the Act 1 talent agency said, but declined to provide details.

Schneider was 19 when she starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's racy ''Last Tango in Paris.'' In it, she played Jeanne, a young Parisian woman who takes up with a middle-aged American businessman, played by Brando.

Full of explicit sex scenes, ''Last Tango'' was banned in Italy for obscenity for nearly two decades, returning to cinemas there only in 1989. In the United States, the movie still has an NC-17 rating for its sexual content, meaning it can't be seen by children under 17 years of age.

In a statement Thursday, French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said Schneider had remained, even nearly four decades after ''Last Tango'', ''Brando's at once seductive, innocent and severe co-star.''

''She will remain a singularly strong image of today's woman,'' Mitterrand said, adding she was ''a cinema icon. Though Schneider appeared in more than two dozen films throughout her career, none would bring her even a fraction of the success of ''Last Tango.''

In 1975, Schneider featured in Michelangelo Antonioni's ''The Passenger,'' a wandering existential drama starring Jack Nicholson as a frustrated and erratic war correspondent. Her last movie, ''The Key,'' by director Guillaume Nicloux, came out in 2007.

The Act 1 representative said she was not aware of funeral plans. She asked not to be named in accordance with her agency's policy.