Francis Ford Coppola was born on April 7, 1939 in Detroit to an Italian immigrant family. He inherited his artistic talent from his parents. His father, Carmine, was a musician playing with Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. His mother, Italia, was an actress who once starred in films. Coppola’s younger sister Talia followed in her mother’s footsteps, changing her name to Talia Shire and starring alongside Sylvester Stallone in Rocky . At the age of nine, Francis was bedridden with Heine-Medin disease, which allowed him to create puppet shows for his own entertainment and lose himself in a fantasy world. After recovering, he started making films with an eight-millimeter camera and tape recorder. When he was 15, he read A Streetcar called Desirewhich played a key role in his interest in theater.
In 1955, he enrolled in dramatic arts at Hofstra College in Hempstead. There he received a scholarship in the field of playwriting. His love for cinema was so great that he once sold his car to pay for a 16mm camera, to direct his own pictures.
Coppola’s early career was not colorful. In the early 1960s, with $ 10 a week to survive, Francis learned how his colleagues were doing. This prompted him to sign a contract to direct an adult film. The Peeper caught the attention of low-budget director Roger Corman who hired Coppola to work on his films as a specialist for everything. Coppola’s strong work ethic prompted Corman to allow him to direct his own creation. The result was Madness (1963), a bloody horror film that Coppola wrote in three days and shot for forty thousand dollars.
The Corleone Mafia Family story in The Godfather has secured a permanent place in Coppola’s filmography. After its premiere in 1972, critics were moved by the presentation of the American criminal underworld. The film became a sensational hit also among cinema fans, and The Godfather won Oscars this year. Coppola won the categories for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The second part of the 1974 series earned him another Oscar as Best Director of 1974. And thanks to Dracula – a horror movie from 1992, based on the novel by Bram Stoker, he received the Saturn Award for Best Director.
Another project Coppola worked on was Apocalypse Now (1979), considered a masterpiece by many critics. He was nominated for several Oscars and made quite a profit. In the 1960s and 1970s, the director was a central figure in the New Hollywood movement and is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. In addition to many great movies, he has contributed to many movies. In 1998, he helped launch the first Classic Independent Film Festival in San Francisco, California. Happy 82nd birthday!