My Cousin Maria Schneider

"Lovingly written" Deborah Harry

"An exquisite portrait of a tragic heroine" Violaine Huisman

A spare, heartbreaking memoir and tribute to Maria Schneider, the 1970s movie starlet who catapulted to fame in the controversial film Last Tango in Paris-only to live the rest of her life plagued by scandal-as told from the perspective of her adoring younger cousin.

The late French actress Maria Schneider is perhaps best known for playing Jeanne in the provocative film Last Tango in Paris, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and released to international shock and acclaim in 1972. It was Maria's first major role, alongside film legend Marlon Brando, when she was barely eighteen years old. The experience would haunt her for the rest of her life, traumatizing her and sparking a tabloid firestorm that only ceased when she began to retreat from the public eye nearly two decades later.

To Maria's much younger cousin, Vanessa Schneider, Maria was a towering figure of another kind-a beautiful and fearsome fixture in Vanessa's childhood, a rising star turned pariah whose career and struggles with addiction won the family shame and pride in equal measure. Here, Vanessa recounts the challenges of their overlapping youths and fraught adulthood and reveals both the tragedy and inevitability of Maria's path in a family plagued by mental illness and in a society rife with misogyny.

Unsentimental and suffused with deep love, My Cousin Maria Schneider is the story of a talented artist and the cousin who admired her, and of exploitation and how its lingering effects can reverberate through a lifetime.

"In this lovingly written memoir we read our way through the operatic coming of age story of Maria Schneider, the young French actor, who dives gracefully into the combat zone of the extremely competitive film industry, surfaces many times, and then loses sight of land in her own struggle with drugs. I had to know, had to read about Maria as told by her younger, adoring and devoted cousin, Vanessa." Deborah Harry
"A touching tribute... Maria Schneider, with all her adventures and struggles, deserves to be better remembered, and her cousin shows us why. This stunning tale of Maria Schneider and her battles is stark yet consistently loving-and unforgettable." Kirkus Reviews
"An incredibly moving love letter." Le Figaro
"An exquisite portrait of a tragic heroine, whose story offers a heartrending example of the cruelty of powerful men" Violaine Huisman
"A devastating book." Vogue France
"Elegantly translated from the French by Molly Ringwald, My Cousin Maria Schneider is both a beautiful eulogy and a much-needed corrective - an opportunity to finally set the record straight... a generous account of a rare and complicated cinematic star" Thessaly La Force, The New York Times
"The book, written in the present tense, as if Vanessa is writing directly to her cousin, has a sad immediacy. Still, there are wonderful moments of enduring joy, connection and discovery" The Washington Post

Vanessa Schneider is a French journalist and novelist. She lives in Paris, where she works at the prestigious daily newspaper Le Monde. For over ten years, she has written award-winning essays and novels that have been translated abroad. My Cousin Maria Schneider is her eighth book, and her first to be translated into English.

Molly Ringwald's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vogue, and she is the author of the bestselling novel-in-stories When It Happens to You. She previously translated Lie with Me, a novel by Philippe Besson.

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