Since discovering early in life her talents lay behind the camera rather than in front, Sofia Coppola has carved a name for herself as an award-winning director. She talks to Helen Barlow about growing up in the film industry, her inevitable career path and the importance of family.
As the daughter of the film-making behemoth, Francis Ford Coppola, and the cousin of the Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola has film-making in her bones. Yet the demure 44-year-old is as retiring as her male relatives are bombastic.
After appearing in her late teens as Mary Corleone in TheGodfather Part III, and as a baby and a child in the first two Godfather movies as well as in other films by her father, she soon discovered her place was behind the camera as a director.
Her dad once went on one of her sets and told her to yell louder, but her quiet authority has proved to be effective. She has her own way of doing things, often making films about women and for women, but most importantly making films for herself.
After her accomplished directing debut, The Virgin Suicides, wowed Cannes audiences in 1999, it was with 2003's Lost In Translation that she would stake her place in history alongside her dad.
At 32, she became the youngest woman ever to receive an Oscar nomination for best director, and the very first American woman to do so. Only two women, Jane Campion and Italy's Lina Wertmueller, had been nominated before her. She won for best original screenplay.
Based on Coppola's own experiences of being left alone in the Japanese capital (the neglectful video director in the film was loosely based on her ex, Spike Jonze), Lost In Translation catapulted an unknown Scarlett Johansson to stardom and gave Bill Murray the opportunity to be taken seriously and receive an Oscar nomination for the only time in his long career. (He also won in the Golden Globes and Baftas).
Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in a scene from the movie Lost in Translation.
Coppola and Murray formed a close bond that endures to this day. They share a distain for the cult of celebrity and retain certain old-fashioned values, like wanting to have control over their careers and to be generally nice and normal to those around them. A lack of bullshit, one might say.
"I feel like Bill trusts me because he took a chance on me," Coppola says. "I was inexperienced when we did Lost In Translation and I think because he felt like we made something worthwhile he appreciates that I see a side of him that maybe not everyone has seen. He has a romantic, sensitive side and I saw that in Groundhog Day. Yet after that he only got to do comedy after comedy."
More than a decade after Lost In Translation, Coppola and Murray are back together, this time for A Very Murray Christmas, a one-hour television special.
Watch the trailer for A Vert Murray Christmas:
Essentially playing himself, Murray is trying to host a giant holiday special at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. It begins with Murray singing about the Christmas Blues as a snowstorm impacts on the city threatening the arrival of his celebrity friends.
"Bill had a famous lounge singer character on Saturday Night Live that I saw as a kid," Coppola recalls. "He was famous for singing the Star Wars theme song and was really funny. Then in Lost In Translation he sang, obviously, and he likes to sing. I love when he sings at the Cafe Carlyle, an old-fashioned small New York venue where Woody Allen also performs. I was saying to Bill, 'Can't you do a week at the cafe singing Christmas standards?' And somehow it morphed into a Christmas TV special.
Director Sofia Coppola on the set of Lost in Translation.
"We were talking about the structure of this kind of corny Christmas variety show like Dean Martin used to do. I thought they hadn't done one in a while and it would be fun to make our version and invite the people we wanted to have on it. Bill also has a Christmas party each year where he invites people from all the different sides of his life, so there was a bit of that in there, too."
Former Letterman music director and side-kick Paul Schaffer would join in the mayhem as would George Clooney - even if jokes were made at his expense concerning the failure of Monuments Men, in which Murray appeared.
"Everyone came on the show because they love Bill, and Bill is friends with George, so he asked him and he was a good sport. I don't think he's seen our show but George has a good sense of humour," Coppola smiles ruefully.
Miley Cyrus, a one-time child star, a motif of Coppola's films (think Kirsten Dunst in The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette, Elle Fanning in Somewhere and Emma Watson in The Bling Ring) joined in the mayhem looking sexy in a satin Santa minidress and swinging on a swing while Clooney warbles in the wings.
"Miley was really cool and just came out and did it," says Coppola. "I knew her a little through Marc Jacobs," she adds, referring to the American designer, for whom Coppola has modelled and who calls her his muse. He's even named a handbag after her.
Her husband, Thomas Mars, who had worked on her previous soundtracks, even made an appearance. Murray notes how the singer for the alternative French rock band, Phoenix, "is a good catch".
Having spoken to Coppola many times over the years it's easy to see that she is now very content, in both her career and personal life. As the mother of two young daughters, 9-year-old Romy, named after her brother Roman, and 5-year-old Cosima, she admits that it's harder to find movies she's willing to commit to than it was 10 years ago.
A Very Murray Christmas starring Bill Murray.
"I don't want to waste time on things when I could be with my kids," she says. "I only want to do things that I'm really invested in."
She also acknowledges it's easier being with a musician. "It's nice to be with someone who is creative so they understand what that is like, but then is not too close."
She and Mars, who is six years younger, married at her family's restored palazzo in Bernalda, Italy in 2011, although she says she is not a traditional sort - "I had two kids before we got married."
She places a huge importance on family. Roman always helps her with the nitty gritty of film-making, while her cousin, Jason Schwartzmann, appears in most of her films - as he does in A Very Murray Christmas. Her beloved father is also frequently involved in the financing, though this one was funded through Netflix.
"I grew up on my dad's film sets and he always worked with his family and also with people for a long time, so there was always a family atmosphere," she explains. "Seeing him work like that was my example of how to work." At age 8, young Sofia even found herself on the set of Apocalypse Now, one of the most difficult shoots in film history.
"There were parts of it that were hard but I am glad we got to live in all these different places. I went to school in the Philippines and Oklahoma and I feel like it makes you adaptable."
Her father still makes wine, including a bubbly champagne called Sofia, at the family's historic Francis Ford Coppola Winery, which her mother worked hard to restore. Eleanor Coppola, of course, is also fiercely independent and had a no-holds-barred approach while co-directing the Emmy-winning documentary, Hearts of Darkness, using her own footage from the Apocalypse Now shoot. She has also published a tell-all book, Notes On A Life, which includes the death of her 22-year-old son Gian-Carlo (killed in a boating accident when Sofia was 15) and was a little too personal for her daughter overall.
Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst on the set of the film Marie Antionette.
"I am glad she can have her creative outlet but I am pretty private, so I don't know what to say about that."
After living for some time in Paris, Coppola and her family are now based in New York. "My kids go to school there but my husband still works in France, so we come to Paris [they have a place in St Germain] for big chunks of time and we were there all summer."
Are her kids showing signs of musical or acting talent? "I think all little kids like a show, so it's hard to say. But one of them has a good voice, so we'll see. I want them to do whatever they want to do. But to me it would be more interesting if they did something other than film because everybody in my family's in the film business. I'm really curious to see how they turn out."
A Very Murray Christmas is screening now on Netflix.
