Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest directors of all time.}} Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Palmes d'Or, in addition of nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award.

Coppola started his career directing ''The Rain People'' (1969) and co-writing ''Patton'' (1970), the latter of which earned him and Edmund H. North the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of ''The Godfather'' (1972) and ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974) which both earned Academy Awards for Best Picture, and the latter earned him Best Director. The films revolutionized the gangster genre. Coppola released the thriller ''The Conversation'' (1974), which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

His next film, the Vietnam War epic ''Apocalypse Now'' (1979), had a notoriously lengthy and strenuous production and also won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola one of only ten filmmakers to have won the award twice. He later directed films such as ''The Outsiders'' and ''Rumble Fish'' (both 1983), ''The Cotton Club'' (1984), ''Peggy Sue Got Married'' (1986), ''The Godfather Part III'' (1990), ''Bram Stoker's Dracula'' (1992), and ''The Rainmaker'' (1997). He also produced ''American Graffiti'' (1973), ''The Black Stallion'' (1979), and ''The Secret Garden'' (1993). Dissatisfaction with the studio system led to his retreat to independent and experimental filmmaking with the films ''Youth Without Youth'' (2007), ''Tetro'' (2009) and ''Twixt'' (2011), culminating in the $120 million-budgeted ''Megalopolis'' (2024) which he financed himself.

Coppola's father Carmine was a composer whose music featured in his son's films. Many of his relatives have found success in film: his sister Talia Shire is an actress, his daughter Sofia is a director, his son Roman is a screenwriter and his nephews Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are actors. In 1997, he cofounded the literary magazine ''Zoetrope: All Story'' with Adrienne Brodeur. Coppola resides in Napa, California, and since the 2010s has been a vintner, owning a family-branded winery of his own. In 2024, Coppola was a Kennedy Center Honoree. Provided by Wikipedia