Jack Nicholson Ruminates on Maria Schneider

Schneider was clearly cast more for her sex appeal than her acting ability. I couldn't resist asking Nicholson, of course only for the purpose of the historical record, whether he was as involved with Schneider off-screen as he was on-screen. He hemmed and hawed before finally offering this answer: "Let's just say she'd stayed at the house and everything."

Famous largely for her sex scenes with Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris," Schneider was quite the free spirit during filming. "She didn't want to be typed as the sexy broad with butter up her [behind]," Nicholson recalls. "But there she was having a discussion one night with this very ascetic director, and she was loaded and half nude, with her bathrobe open. I thought Michelangelo was going to die. I remember in one scene we did, she was so unconscious that I had to hold the back of her head up when I delivered my lines."

In retrospect, Schneider said, "I thank God every day that Antonioni directed the thing, and not that little rodent Polanski."