So a Coppola has inspired strong reactions from the lm community since her rst appearance on screen, when she played the infant Michael Francis Rizzi in her father’s seminal lm, The Godfather. Other than the main characters, So a was the only actor to have appeared in all three Godfather lms, brie y portraying a young émigré in The Godfather II, before eventually usurping Winona Ryder for the role of Mary Corleone (the daughter of Al Pacino’s Michael). Critics ripped into the 19-year-old and her performance upon the lm’s release—one even called So a’s involvement the lm’s “almost-fatal aw”—and it earned her two Golden Raspberry Awards as Worst Supporting Actress and Worst New Star.
Behind the lens, however, Coppola’s narrative has changed considerably. While her work is occasionally polarizing, few can deny that she is a champion storyteller. Original, introspective, caught through backlit windows and always the gauziest of female gazes, her lms are visual odes to society’s perennial fascination with young women and their coming of age, from a candy oss–obsessed Marie Antoinette, to the gaggle of sisters in The Virgin Suicides to the quixotic coupling central to 2003’s Lost in Translation, and the director’s forthcoming highly anticipated summer release, The Beguiled.
While publicly lauded—she was awarded Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, only the second time a woman won the prize in the festival’s 70-year history—Coppola is nonetheless quite private about her own life. Here are ve things you likely didn’t know about her.
