Sofia Coppola (born May 14, 1971 in New York City, New York) is an American film director, actress, producer, and writer and is the daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola.
She has directed two films: The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost In Translation (2003). For the latter, she won the Golden Globe awards for best picture (musical or comedy) and best screenplay, and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. She was also nominated for the Best Director Oscar, the first American woman to receive this honor. This makes the Coppola family (Carmine , Francis Ford and Sofia) the second three-generation Academy-Award winning family, after the Hustons (Walter, John and Anjelica).
On June 26, 1999 she married film director Spike Jonze. On December 5, 2003 she filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences".
Coppola has also had a limited career as a film actress. She began by working as an infant or child extra in the films of her father. (Some may call these cameo appearances, but as she was not yet famous, she was simply a background actor.) The first role Coppola played in a film not involving her father was a bit role in the 1987 film Anna . Her father then elected to cast her as Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III. Her performance was universally panned, including the award of "Worst New Star" in the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards. This was effectively the end of her acting career, barring an appearance in the independent film Inside Monkey Zetterland, and a bit part in The Phantom Menace.
Coppola has recently visited the famous French palace at Versailles, for research for her next directorial move. She is set to produce a historical epic on the life of doomed 18th-century royal, Queen Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined by French republicans in 1793. "Marie-Antoinette" is based upon the biography of the queen by British historian Lady Antonia Fraser. Kirsten Dunst is set to play the lead role, and, controversially, Coppola has cast her cousin Jason Schwartzman as Marie-Antoinette's husband, King Louis XVI.
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Last updated: 05-13-2005 07:56:04
