Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, magazine publisher and screenwriter.
Coppola attended Great Neck High School on Long Island, where he began his study of film-making, music, and theatre. In 1955 he went on to attend Hofstra University in New York, majoring in theatre arts. Coppola completed his formal education in film in UCLA's graduate program.
Coppola is most famous for The Godfather series, the first part of which was released in 1972 and has now become a classic. The Godfather starred, amongst other notables, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Robert Duvall. It received many awards and achieved great success.
Perhaps Coppola's second most popular and acclaimed movie is Apocalypse Now (1979), a Vietnam War epic that did well both in the critics' eyes and the box office. Like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now's cast was star-studded
In addition to directing, Coppola has worked as writer and producer. He has contributed to the screenplays of movies he has directed (including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now) as well as to the 1974 film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. As a producer, Coppola's credit list becomes even longer and more impressive. Not only has he helped to produce some of his daughter Sofia's movies (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette), but also Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999), Robert Duvall's Assassination Tango(2002), and Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006).
