Sofia Coppola

Sofia Carmina Coppola (born May 14, 1971) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and former actress.

She has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Golden Lion, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Coppola was born in New York City on May 14, 1971, the youngest child and only daughter of documentarian Eleanor (née Neil) and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.

She is of Italian descent (Lucanian and Neapolitan ) on her father's side and was raised on her parents' farm in Rutherford, California.

At 15, Coppola interned with Chanel.

The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her acting debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed crime drama The Godfather (1972).

Coppola also acted in her father's films The Outsiders (1983), in a scene where Matt Dillon, Tommy Howell, and Ralph Macchio are eating at a Dairy Queen; Rumble Fish (1983); The Cotton Club (1984); and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), in which she portrayed Kathleen Turner's Sister Nancy.

Frankenweenie (1984) was the first film Coppola performed in that was not associated with her father; however, it often goes unnoted due to her stage name "Domino", which she adopted at the time because she thought it was glamorous.

Coppola later appeared in several music videos and had a supporting role in the fantasy comedy film Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).

Coppola graduated from St. Helena High School in 1989.

A short film entitled Life Without Zoe (1989), released as part of a tripartite anthology film New York Stories, was co-written by a teenage Coppola and her father; her father also directed the film.

Coppola returned to her father's Godfather trilogy in both the second and third Godfather films, playing an immigrant child in The Godfather Part II and playing Michael Corleone's daughter in The Godfather Part III after the originally cast actress, Winona Ryder, dropped out of the film at the last minute due to nervous exhaustion.

It has been suggested that Coppola's performance in The Godfather Part III damaged Francis Ford Coppola's career and ruined Sofia's before it had even begun.

Coppola has said that she never really wanted to act and only did it to help out when her father asked her to.

It has also been suggested that Sofia's role in the film may have affected its box office performance, which started strongly and then went into decline.

Coppola herself worried that she had only been given the role because she was the director's daughter, and the role placed a strain on her during the time of shooting that her mother observed in a series of diaries she wrote for Vogue during the filming.

Coppola later stated that she was not hurt by the criticism from her work in the film because she never especially wanted an acting career.

She then portrayed Mary Corleone, the daughter of Michael Corleone, in the sequel The Godfather Part III (1990).

After she was critically panned for her performance in The Godfather Part III (for which she was named "Worst Supporting Actress" and "Worst New Star" at the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards), Coppola largely ended her acting career; however, she did appear in the independent film Inside Monkey Zetterland (1992), as well as in the backgrounds of films by her friends and family (for example, she appeared as Saché, one of Queen Padmé Amidala's five handmaidens, in George Lucas' 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace).

Coppola also appeared in several 1990s music videos: the Black Crowes' "Sometimes Salvation"; Sonic Youth's "Mildred Pierce"; Madonna's "Deeper and Deeper"; the Chemical Brothers' "Elektrobank", which was directed by her then-husband Spike Jonze; and later Phoenix's "Funky Squaredance".

She first studied at Mills College and transferred to the California Institute of the Arts from 1993 to 1994 to focus on painting.

Thereafter, she attended Art Center College of Design, where she was mentored by Paul Jasmin.

After dropping out of college, Coppola started a clothing line called Milkfed, which is now sold exclusively in Japan.

Among her extensive Hollywood family are her aunt Talia Shire, and her first cousins Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman.

Coppola had many varying interests growing up, including fashion, photography, music, and design, and did not initially intend to become a filmmaker.

Coppola was first drawn to the story after reading the book by Jeffrey Eugenides in 1995, at the recommendation of musician Thurston Moore.

However, after making her first short film Lick the Star in 1998, she realized it "brought together all the things [she] loved", and decided to continue her directing pursuits.

Coppola's acting career, marked by frequent criticisms of nepotism and negative reviews, began while she was an infant, as she made background appearances in eight of her father's films.

The best known of these is her appearance in The Godfather as the infant Michael Francis Rizzi, in the baptism scene.

Coppola's first short film was Lick the Star (1998).

It played many times on the Independent Film Channel.

Coppola transitioned into filmmaking with her feature-length directorial debut in the coming-of-age drama The Virgin Suicides (1999).

It was the first of her collaborations with actress Kirsten Dunst.

Her films often deal with themes of loneliness, wealth, privilege, isolation, youth, femininity, and adolescence in America.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

She made her feature film directing debut with The Virgin Suicides (1999); the film adaptation of the novel The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.

It received critical acclaim upon its premiere in North America at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and was released later that year.

Coppola received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the comedy-drama Lost in Translation (2003), and became the third woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.

She has since directed the historical drama Marie Antoinette (2006), the family drama Somewhere (2010), the satirical crime drama The Bling Ring (2013), the southern gothic thriller The Beguiled (2017), the comedy On the Rocks (2020), and the biographical drama Priscilla (2023).

In 2015, Coppola released the Netflix Christmas musical comedy special A Very Murray Christmas, which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.