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Sofia Coppola is one of the most acclaimed female filmmakers in the world. Born in New York City in 1971, Coppola was born into a filmmaking family. Both of her parents - her legendary father, Francis Ford Coppola, and her mother, Eleanor Coppola - are directors. Her brother, Roman Coppola, and niece, Gia Coppola, have both grown up to be filmmakers. And her extended family - aunt Talia Shire and cousins Nicolas Cage, Jason Schwartzman, Robert Schwartzman and Marc Coppola - is also filled with actors. Growing up, Sofia, too, was on screen, first appearing as the infant Michael Rizzi in her father's iconic film The Godfather (1972). After a run of small roles in her dad's movies, her acting career effectively stalled with her widely panned turn in The Godfather Part III (1990), where Sofia filled in at the last minute for late withdrawal Winona Ryder. 'I wasn't planning on being an actress so it was a tough thing to go through,' Coppola said. 'I was eighteen and you're already insecure at that age so being slammed in public didn't help.'1
Thereafter, Coppola would go to art school and study painting, eventually becoming a commercial photographer, and helping design her own clothing line, Milk Fed, which was - and still is - a success in Japan. Eventually, she turned to the family business ('I had a 20-year tutorial on film in my own home,' she's said.2 'Now when I am on film sets it's really comfortable because it's so familiar'3), making her cinematic debut with The Virgin Suicides (1999). But it was her second film, Lost in Translation (2003), that found Coppola gaining her own reputation, and stepping out from her father's shadow. Based on her own experiences - of lonely work trips to Japan, of her failed marriage to fellow filmmaker Spike Jonze, of a world of isolated, insulated celebrity - the film tapped into Coppola's own distinctive voice, and earned huge critical acclaim. Lost in Translation was nominated for Best Picture at the seventy-sixth Academy Awards, and Coppola was nominated as Best Director, becoming the first American woman to receive a Best Director nomination, and just the third female filmmaker to do so (following Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties in 1977...