Francis Ford Coppola ( / ˈ k oʊ p əl ə / KOH -pə-lə ; [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] born April 7, 1939) [ 4 ] is an American filmmaker. One of the leading figures of the New Hollywood , Coppola is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema . [ a ] Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards , a BAFTA Award , three Golden Globe Awards , and two Palmes d’Or , in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award . Coppola was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2024, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2025. [ 12 ] 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 . [ 13 ] 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). Dissatisfied with the studio system, he transitioned to independent and experimental filmmaking with Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009), Twixt (2011), and Megalopolis (2024). [ 14 ] 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. [ 15 ] Coppola resides in Napa, California , and since the 2010s has been a vintner , owning a family-branded winery of his own. [ 16 ] Francis Ford Coppola was born in Detroit , Michigan, in 1939, to father Carmine Coppola (1910–1991), [ 17 ] a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and mother Italia Coppola (née Pennino; 1912–2004), a family of second-generation Italian immigrants. His paternal grandparents came to the United States from Bernalda , Basilicata. [ 18 ] His maternal grandfather, popular Italian composer Francesco Pennino, emigrated from Naples , Italy. [ 19 ] At the time of Coppola’s birth, his father was an arranger and assistant orchestra director for The Ford Sunday Evening Hour , an hour-long concert music radio series sponsored by the Ford Motor Company . [ 20 ] [ 21 ] Coppola was born at Henry Ford Hospital , and those two connections to Henry Ford inspired the Coppolas to choose the middle name “Ford” for their son. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] Francis is the middle of three children: his older brother was August Coppola , and his younger sister is actress Talia Shire . [ 18 ] Two years after Coppola’s birth, his father was named principal flutist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra , under the baton of Arturo Toscanini , and the family moved to New York. They settled in Woodside, Queens , where Coppola spent the remainder of his childhood. Having contracted polio as a boy, Coppola was bedridden for large periods of his childhood, during which he did homemade puppet theater productions. He developed an interest in theater after reading A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) at age 15. [ 24 ] He created 8 mm feature films edited from home movies with titles such as The Rich Millionaire and The Lost Wallet . [ 25 ] Although Coppola was a mediocre student, his interest in technology and engineering earned him the childhood nickname “Science”. [ 26 ] He trained initially for a career in music and became proficient in the tuba , eventually earning a music scholarship to the New York Military Academy . [ 25 ] In all, Coppola attended 23 schools [ 27 ] before he eventually graduated from Great Neck North High School . [ 28 ] He entered Hofstra University in 1955 as a theater arts major. There, he was awarded a scholarship in playwriting. This furthered his interest in directing theater, though his father disapproved and wanted him to study engineering. [ 24 ] Coppola was profoundly impressed by Sergei Eisenstein ‘s film October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928), especially the quality of its editing , and decided to pursue cinema rather than theater. [ 24 ] He said he was influenced to become a writer by his brother August. [ 27 ] Coppola also credits the work of Elia Kazan for influencing him as a writer and director.
Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Ford_Coppola