Sofia Coppola

COP11 · August 16, 2010

Sofia Carmina Coppola (born May 14, 1971) is an Academy Award-winning U.S. screen-writer, film director, actress and producer. She was the third female film director to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing.

Early life

Coppola was born in New York City, New York, the youngest child and only daughter of set decorator/artist Eleanor Coppola and director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather and Apocalypse Now), grand-daughter of the late composer Carmine Coppola, sister of Roman Coppola and the late Gian-Carlo Coppola, niece of her father's siblings August Coppola and Talia Shire, and a cousin of Nicolas Cage, Jason Schwartzman and Robert Carmine. She attended Mills College and the California Institute of the Arts, and interned with Chanel when she was fifteen years old. After graduating, Coppola started a clothing line called Milkfed that is sold exclusively in Japan.

Career

Acting

Coppola's acting career, frequently described as based largely upon nepotism, began as an infant, making background appearances in seven of her father's films. The most well-known of these early roles is her appearance in The Godfather as the baby boy in the christening scene. She is also seen in her father's film The Outsiders in a scene where Matt Dillon, Tommy Howell, and Ralph Macchio are eating at a Dairy Queen before the famous burning church scene.

Frankenweenie (1984) was the first film she 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.

In 1986, Coppola was cast as Kathleen Turner's sister, Nancy Kelcher, in Peggy Sue Got Married. The film was directed by her father, Francis Ford Coppola, and costarred her cousin, Nicolas Cage.

The 1989 short film entitled Life Without Zoe was released as part of a tripartite anthology film, New York Stories. It was written by Sofia Coppola and her father, Francis Ford Coppola (who also directed the film).

Her best known acting role is Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III (1990), a significant role for which she was cast by her father after Winona Ryder fell ill. Her critically panned performance (for which she received the award of "Worst New Star" in the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards) effectively ended her acting career, save for appearances in the 1992 independent film Inside Monkey Zetterland, and in the background of films by her friends and family. In 1999, she appeared as Saché in George Lucas' Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. She has since been quoted as saying she wasn't hurt by the criticism from her role in The Godfather Part III because she never especially wanted an acting career.

Coppola can also be seen in several music videos from the 1990s, appearing in The Black Crowes' "Sometimes Salvation" in 1992 and the Chemical Brothers' "Elektrobank" in 1997, which was directed by her future husband Spike Jonze.

Filmmaking

Her first three films were Lick the Star (1998), The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003). Lost in Translation won the Academy Award for her original screen-play and three Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture. Along-side Lina Wertmüller and Jane Campion, Coppola became the third female director to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing. Her win for best original screen-play in 2003 made her a third-generation Oscar winner. In 2004, Coppola was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Coppola's most recent film is the biopic Marie Antoinette, adapted from the biography by British historian Lady Antonia Fraser. Kirsten Dunst plays the title character who marries King Louis XVI, played by Jason Schwartzman, Coppola's cousin. It débuted at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival where, despite boos in the audience, it received a standing ovation. Critics were divided.

In the mid-1990s, she and best friend Zoe Cassavetes helmed the short-lived series Hi Octane on Comedy Central. which spot-lit performers in underground music, with frequent guests like Donovan Leitch, Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, Beck, and model-actress Jenny Shimizu (whose contribution to the show was teaching viewers the proper way to repair transmission on a vehicle).

In December 2008, Coppola's first commercial premiered during an episode of Gossip Girl. The advertisement in which she directed for the Christian Dior fragrance Miss Dior Chérie which was shot in France with model Maryna Linchuk was very well received and continues to be popular on YouTube.

Variety reported in April 2009 that her new film, Somewhere, had recently received permission to film at Chateau Marmont. The plot of her latest work will concentrate around a "bad boy" actor portrayed by Stephen Dorff who is forced to reevaluate his life when his daughter, played by Elle Fanning, arrives unexpectedly.

Modeling

At the beginning of the 1990s, she was often featured in women-oriented magazines like Seventeen and YM. In 1998, she cofounded the clothing line Milk Fed in Japan with friend Stephanie Hayman in cooperation with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon.

In 2002, fashion designer Marc Jacobs hand-picked the actress/director to be the face of his house's fragrance. The campaign involved photographs of her shot by photographer Juergen Teller in his chic signature grainy style.

Awards

Coppola was nominated for three Academy Awards for her 2003 film Lost in Translation, in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing - Original Screenplay. She would go on to win for Best Writing - Original Screenplay, but lost the other two nominations to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Her nomination for Best Director made her the first American woman in history to be nominated in that category, and the third overall, after Lina Wertmüller and Jane Campion. In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the fourth woman to be nominated, and the first to win the award. Coppola, however, remains the youngest female to be nominated in the Best Director category.

Her win for Best Original Screenplay resulted in her family becoming the second three-generation Oscar winning family, her grandfather Carmine Coppola and her father Francis Ford Coppola having previously won Oscars. The first family to achieve this feat was the Hustons, Walter, John, and Anjelica.

For her work on Lost in Translation, Coppola also won a Best Screenplay Golden Globe and received a BAFTA nomination.

Personal life

Coppola married director Spike Jonze in 1999 after being friends for nearly a decade; they were divorced in 2003.

Sofia Coppola lives in Paris. Sofia described her love for the city and her favorite places there, "The Palais-Royal, the Tuileries Garden, the Musee D'Orsay. You can tell I love the city, right? It's a filmmaker's dream there; the colors are beautiful!" There, in Paris, on Tuesday, November 28, 2006, Coppola gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Romy, who is named in honor of her brother Roman. The child's father is Thomas Mars, lead singer of the French rock band Phoenix. Coppola first met Mars while producing the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides. They have since collaborated on Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and reportedly the upcoming Somewhere.

On December 10, 2009, Mars confirmed that Coppola was pregnant with their second child. On June 25, 2010 it was reported that a second daughter named Cosima was born in New York City "within the last month."