Sofia Coppola (born May 14, 1971,New York, New York, U.S.) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and fashion designer known best for her filmsThe Virgin Suicides (1999) andLost in Translation (2003). In 2004 she was the first American woman to be nominated for anAcademy Award in the category ofbest director.

Coppola is the daughter of film directorFrancis Ford Coppola and artist and documentary filmmakerEleanor Coppola. Sofia was born inNew York City while her father was filmingThe Godfather. She grew up in northern California and played small parts in her father’s films, often under the stage name “Domino Coppola.” Her first (and last) significant role was as Michael Corleone’s daughter Mary in thethird Godfather movie. The overwhelmingly negative reaction from critics and audiences to her performance pushed her away from a career inacting.

Instead, in the early 1990s she briefly studied painting atCalifornia Institute of the Arts anddabbled in modeling,photography, andfashion design. In 1994 she co-launched a fashion line in Japan called Milk Fed. It was in the late 1990s that she created her first films, two shorts:Bed, Bath, and Beyond (1996) andLick the Star (1998). In 1999 her first feature film,The Virgin Suicides, was released. Coppola herself wrote the screenplay based on the novel of the same name byJeffrey Eugenides. That same year she married director-producerSpike Jonze (divorced 2003).

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Coppola’s next feature,Lost in Translation (2003)—which she wrote, directed, and produced—earned her anAcademy Award for best original screenplay, a nomination for best picture, and a historic nomination for best director, the first American woman to receive that recognition. That film, starringBill Murray andScarlett Johansson, was a runaway commercial and critical hit.Lost in Translation was followed by the less-appreciatedMarie Antoinette (2006), adapted from Antonia Fraser’s revisionist andcompassionate biography,Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001). Set in lavish interiors and with elaborate costuming and a strikingly anachronistic 1980s soundtrack, Coppola’s film portrayed the young 18th-centuryqueen-to-be (played byKirsten Dunst) from a fresh, personal—rather than the standard historical—perspective. Though it was considered a stunning cinematic display (it won the Academy Award for best costumes), the movie was largely panned by critics for lacking depth. Coppola returned to the fashion world in 2008 to design a line of leather handbags for theLouis Vuitton fashion house.

In 2010 she released the filmSomewhere, which won theVenice Film Festival’s Golden Lion prize for best film. In 2011 she married French musician ThomasMars, and the couple later had two children. In 2013 she releasedThe Bling Ring. In May 2016 she staged her first opera,Giuseppe Verdi’sLa traviata, in collaboration with fashion designerValentino at the Teatro dell’Opera inRome.

In 2017 Coppola became the second woman to win the best director award at theCannes film festival. She was honored for her work inThe Beguiled, aCivil War thriller about a wounded Union soldier who is taken in by the women at a Southernboarding school. In addition to helming the film, she wrote the script, which was adapted from a novel by Thomas Cullinan. Coppola then reteamed with Murray—this time, on the dramedyOn the Rocks, about a young mother (Rashida Jones) who, fearing that her husband is having an affair, seeks the help of her playboy father.

Coppola wrote, directed, and produced 2023’sPriscilla, a biopic about actress and businesswomanPriscilla Presley (played byCailee Spaeny). Based on Presley’s 1985 memoir,Elvis and Me, the film follows a teenage Priscilla Beaulieu’s courtship with andsubsequent marriage to rock-and-roll iconElvis Presley (Jacob Elordi).Priscilla premiered at theVenice Film Festival in September 2023, and the audience gave it a seven-minute standing ovation.

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