To say that Sofia Coppola grew up on screen would be an understatement. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and documentary-maker Eleanor Coppola, she appeared in all three Godfather films: as the baby being christened in 1972’s The Godfather, as a child on the steamboat in 1974’s The Godfather Part II, and, aged 19, as Mary Corleone in 1990’s The Godfather Part III.
In between came small roles in several of her dad’s films, including 1983’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, 1984’s The Cotton Club and 1986’s Peggy Sue Got Married, in which she played Kathleen Turner’s younger sister Nancy. She also popped up all over 1990s music videos, playing a wild-eyed Joan Crawford in Sonic Youth’s 1990 Mildred Pierce, a troubled drifter in the Black Crowes’ 1992 Sometimes Salvation, one of Madonna’s clubbing friends in 1992’s Deeper and Deeper, and an injured gymnast in the Chemical Brothers’ 1997 Elektrobank, directed by her then-boyfriend Spike Jonze.
Although this brings up loads of questions you may well like to ask her already – what was it like growing up in the Coppola household, with Nicolas Cage as her cousin? – it’s probably what happened when she switched to behind the camera that will intrigue you most.
Did she ever thank Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore for accidentally kickstarting her screenwriting and directing career by recommending Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 The Virgin Suicides to her? How terrified was she that Bill Murray would even turn up in Tokyo to film 2003’s Lost in Translation with no contract? Why is there a pair of Converse trainers in 2006’s Marie Antoinette? What was the strangest thing she found while filming 2013’s The Bling Ring inside Paris Hilton’s actual house?
And now she has returned to Marie Antoinette in the documentary Making Marie Antoinette, pieced together from more than 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage shot by Eleanor, and finished by Sofia after her death in 2024. The 20th anniversary celebrations have already started too: there’s an exhibition at the Petit Trianon in Versailles full of costumes, props and bits from the film – and New Order even turned up to play a mini concert there last month.
Get your questions in by noon this Wednesday 7 October and we’ll publish her replies in the Readers Interview section. Let them eat questions!
• Making Marie Antoinette is in cinemas from 23 October and streams on Mubi from 6 November
