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Sofia Coppola

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Sofia Coppola

Sofia Carmina Coppola (born May 14, 1971) is an American director, actress, producer, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She was the first American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing.

Biography

Early life

Sofia is the daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, sister of Roman Coppola and the late Gian-Carlo Coppola, niece of Talia Shire and a cousin of Nicolas Cage, Jason Schwartzman and Robert Carmine/Schwartzman.

She attended Mills College and the California Institute of the Arts. After graduating Sofia started a clothing line called MilkFed that is sold exclusively in Japan.

Career

Coppola's career in film began early, as she appeared as an infant or a child extra in several of her father's films. The best known of these anonymous roles is her appearance in The Godfather as the baby boy in the christening scene. She is also featured in Coppola's film The Outsiders in the scene where Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, and Ralph Macchio are talking at the Dairy Queen before the famous burning church scene.

Anna (1987) was the first film in which she performed that was not associated with her father. However, her best known role is Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III (1990), a role into which she was cast at the last minute after Winona Ryder fell ill. This heavily criticized performance (for which she received the award of "Worst New Star" in the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards) effectively ended her acting career, except for an appearance in the independent film Inside Monkey Zetterland (1992), and a bit part in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). She played a gymnast in the video for "Elektrobank" by the Chemical Brothers, directed by her then-husband Spike Jonze.

Coppola is now better known as a successful film director. 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 original screenplay and three Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture. With her Oscar nomination for Best Director (for Lost in Translation), Coppola became the third woman to receive an Oscar nomination for film direction.

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 Cannes Film Festival, where, despite being booed by the audience, and most especially by the French, it received a standing ovation. Critics have been divided - some full of praise for the film and some very chilly, some stating that Coppola's ambitions are above results.

Coppola has often been lauded as a pop culture icon within the indie music/film communities. In the mid-1990s, she and best friend Zoe Cassavetes helmed the short-lived series Hi Octane on Comedy Central. The show was a virtual who's-who of underground music, with frequent guests like Donovan Leitch, Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, Beck, and model-actress Jenny Shimizu (whose contribution to the show was educating viewers on the proper way to repair a transmission on a vehicle). However, Coppola's distinct tastes in indie music and style came together in a culturally controversial way in her soundtrack choices for Marie Antoinette.

The mid '90s would prove to be an extremely productive time in Coppola's life. From the beginning of the decade, in which her art school education was often featured in girl-centric magazines like Seventeen and YM to the middle in which she co-helmed the clothing line she founded with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, and the end which marked her directorial debut. In 2002 fashion designer Marc Jacobs handpicked the actress/director to be the face of his house's fragrance. The campaign involved photographs of the Academy Award winner that were shot by Juergen Teller in a grainy, documentary style.

Personal life

Coppola married the director Spike Jonze in 1999 after being friends for nearly ten years; they were divorced in 2003.

In Paris, France on Tuesday, 28 November 2006, Coppola gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Romy, who is named in honor of the director's brother, Roman. [1] The child's father is Thomas Mars, of the French rock band Phoenix, whom she met in 2002, during the development of the soundtrack for Lost in Translation. [2]

Filmography

Director - films

Director - music videos

Actress - films

Actress - music videos

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