Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppolais an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood film movement of the 1960s and 1970s and is widely considered one of the greatest directors of all time. He is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or, and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA).

After directing The Rain People in 1969, Coppola co-wrote Patton (1970), which earned him 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), which revolutionized the gangster genre of filmmaking, receiving strong commercial and critical reception. The Godfather won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Mario Puzo). The Godfather Part II (1974) became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, the film earned Coppola two more Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, making him the second director (after Billy Wilder) to win these three awards for the same film.

Also in 1974, Coppola released the thriller The Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next film, the war epic Apocalypse Now (1979), which had a notoriously lengthy and strenuous production, was widely acclaimed for vividly depicting the Vietnam War. It also won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola one of only ten filmmakers to have won the award twice. Other notable films Coppola has released since the start of the 1980s include the dramas 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). Coppola has acted as producer on such diverse films as American Graffiti (1973), The Black Stallion (1979), The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) and The Secret Garden (1993).

Many of Coppola's relatives and children have become popular actors and filmmakers in their own right: 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. Coppola resides in Napa, California, and since the 2010s has been a vintner, owning a family-branded winery of his own.