Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of our time. As the maverick founder of American Zoetrope, he personally initiated and nourished the careers of talents such as directors George Lucas, Carroll Ballard, John Milius, Gordon Willis, and daughter Sofia Coppola, and actors Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, James Caan, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Matt Dillon, and Diane Lane, among many others. Zoetrope-produced films have received 16 Academy Awards and 70 nominations, with four included in the American Film Institute's "Top 100 American Films."

As a writer, director, producer, and technological pioneer, Coppola has created a body of work that has helped to shape contemporary American cinema. One of the most honored film artists of his or any generation, he has also endured crushing defeat and personal sorrow. His cornucopia of honors overflows with Oscars, Globes, Palmes d'Or, and Writers and Director's Guild awards – yet he also knows what it feels like when a dream shatters. In 1983, he gave up Zoetrope Studios, the Hollywood-based studio he hoped would lead American filmmaking into a technologically vibrant 21st century. The ensuing financial hardships led to years of "work for hire" – the disdainful term for those who serve at the pleasure of others. For a proud and independent soul, this meant directing films in the corporate sphere, over which he had no rights of ownership. He chose projects which piqued his imagination, even as he paid off debts and built alternative businesses to provide enduring financial security for his family and himself.

But after the dawning of a new century, having met these challenges, Coppola once again made an unorthodox choice: to regain expressive freedom by returning to the dream of his early years: making movies of modest budget, far from a Hollywood sound stage, with a small crew and actors who were passionately committed.

In 1970 Coppola was persuaded to direct a gangster picture based upon a best-selling novel by Mario Puzo, The Godfather. His battles with Paramount executives are by now the stuff of legend. The Godfather created a sensation upon release, altering the course of his career. Its equally successful follow-up, The Godfather, Part II, is credited with starting an industry-wide trend by using numerals in titles and making sequels respectable – and immensely profitable. The Godfather, Part III (1990), made almost 20 years later, continued the tradition. In between the two gangster epics, Coppola made The Conversation (1974) from his original screenplay. It is an off-beat quasi-thriller about wiretapping and responsibility which endures as one of his most admired and influential pictures.

In 1976, Coppola began Apocalypse Now, financing the Vietnam War epic himself. Almost everything that could go wrong did: star Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack; co-star Marlon Brando showed up grotesquely overweight; a typhoon destroyed the sets. Shooting stopped, then re-started, and the budget skyrocketed, delaying the film's release until 1979. Stylistically, Apocalypse Now was so unusual, especially for a war film, that critics were originally divided. Nonetheless, its box office was respectable and, over time, hugely successful. Coppola is also well-known for his films Peggy Sue Got Married and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and for writing Patton.

Francis Ford Coppola has always been a dreamer, but he is one of those rare people who determinedly has turned his dreams into reality. With the imagination of a child and an ever-curious mind, he continues to pursue his conviction that the magic combination of talent and technology, which was the basis of the birth of the motion picture, can continue to combine in ever new ways.