Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola (, Italian: [ˈkɔppola]; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, film composer, and vintner. He was a central figure in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.After directing The Rain People in 1969, Coppola co-wrote Patton (1970), earning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with Edmund H. North. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather (1972). The film revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, and was adored by the public and critics alike. The Godfather won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Mario Puzo). The Godfather Part II, which followed in 1974, became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, the film brought Coppola three more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, and made him the second director (after Billy Wilder) to be so honored three times for the same film. The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next film, Apocalypse Now (1979), which notoriously had a lengthy and strenuous production, was widely acclaimed for its vivid depiction of the Vietnam War. The film won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola one of only eight filmmakers to have won that award twice. While a number of Coppola's ventures in the 1980s and 1990s were critically lauded, he has never quite achieved the same commercial success with films as in the 1970s. His best-known films released since the start of the 1980s are the dramas The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both 1983), the crime dramas The Cotton Club (1984) and The Godfather Part III (1990), and the horror film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). A number of Coppola's relatives and children have become famous actors and filmmakers in their own right: his sister is the actress Talia Shire; his daughter Sofia Coppola and granddaughter Gia Coppola are actresses and directors, and the actors Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are his nephews.