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 1975, Schneider appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Professione: reporter," a wandering existential drama starring Jack Nicholson as a frustrated and erratic war correspondent.
Throughout her career, Schneider appeared in more than two dozen films, most of them French. 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.
