Reading “The Virgin Suicides” novel made her want to become a director.
If you’re a big fan of Sofia Coppola’s movies, there’s a good chance you already know quite a bit about her.
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Here are some things you might not know about Coppola and her films:
1.
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore recommended Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides to Coppola.
2.
Until then, she wasn’t interested in taking part in the family business of filmmaking.
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She told Vogue in 2020: “I was really proud that I had interests outside of my family. Everyone in my family worked in film so it made me less inclined to.”
3.
Reading The Virgin Suicides changed her mind.
Paramount Pictures
“I really didn’t know I wanted to be a director until [then] and saw so clearly how it had to be done,” she told Cinema Review in 2005. “I immediately saw the central story as being about what distance and time and memory do to you, and about the extraordinary power of the unfathomable.”
4.
There was already an adaptation of The Virgin Suicides written when Coppola finished her script, but the production company wasn’t happy with it and went with hers instead.
Julien M. Hekimian / Getty Images For Chanel
5.
The Virgin Suicides is the first of four collaborations between Coppola and Kirsten Dunst.
6.
Coppola also directed the music video for Air’s “Playground Love,” which followed the actors and their characters on- and off-set of The Virgin Suicides.
View this video on YouTube
Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com
7.
Robert Schwartzman, who played Baldino, is Coppola’s cousin.
8.
According to Scarlett Johansson, Coppola wanted her to appear in The Virgin Suicides after seeing the young actor in Manny & Lo.
Sony Pictures Classics
Johannsson went on to star in Coppola’s next feature, Lost in Translation, four years later.
9.
Johannsson was just 17 when she filmed Lost in Translation.
Focus Films / courtesy Everett Collection
10.
Coppola has said she wouldn’t have made Lost in Translation if Bill Murray, who she’d written the lead role for, hadn’t agreed to star in it.
Focus Films / courtesy Everett Collection
11.
With Lost in Translation, Coppola became the first woman nominated for directing, producing, and screenwriting during the Oscars all in the same year.
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She won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
12.
Lost in Translation also won Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards.
Focus Films / courtesy Everett Collection
13.
Charlotte’s husband, John, was loosely based on Spike Jonze, Coppola’s former husband. There were rumors that Anna Faris’ character, Kelly, was based on Cameron Diaz (who starred in Jonze’s Being John Malkovich), but Coppola has never confirmed this.
Focus Films / courtesy Everett Collection
14.
Nearly 20 years later, only Murray, Johansson, and Coppola know for sure what Bob whispered to Charlotte at the end of the movie.
Focus Films / courtesy Everett Collection
15.
Marie Antoinette is the second of Coppola’s collaborations with Kirsten Dunst.
Sony Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection
16.
Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, who played Antoinette and Louis XVI, respectively, were both about a decade older than their teenage characters at the time of filming.
Francois Durand / Getty Images
17.
Jason Schwartzman, who played Louis XVI, is Coppola’s cousin (and the aforementioned Robert Schwartzman’s brother).
Sony Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection
18.
Coppola was allowed to film Marie Antoinette at the actual Palace of Versailles.
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Exterior of the Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence located about 19 kilometers west of Paris, France
19.
Manola Blahnik designed hundreds of shoes for the movie.
20.
Popular French patisserie Ladurée, meanwhile, made the pastries for the film.
Koh Hasebe / Getty Images, Sony Pictures Releasing
22.
Marie Antoinette was Dornan’s onscreen debut.
23.
Somewhere was loosely inspired by Coppola’s own relationship with her very famous father, Francis Ford Coppola.
Rich Fury / Getty Images for Vanity Fair
She told Metro, “I thought about trips I took with my dad at that age. It was so exciting to go places that kids don’t normally go. He taught me how to play craps in a casino, things like that, which are memorable to a kid. So I tried to put those memories in,” adding, “Whenever he would write a script, he liked to stay in a hotel and he brought me with him sometimes.”
24.
Coppola wrote the role of Johnny Marco, the main character in Somewhere, with Stephen Dorff in mind, because he had both a “bad-boy actor” vibe and “this really sweet, sincere side.”
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
25.
Dorff and Elle Fanning, who plays his daughter in Somewhere, bonded after Coppola instructed them to spend an afternoon together.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
Dorff picked up Fanning from school and they went to Pinkberry and a pottery-painting shop, where Dorff made an ashtray and Fanning made a soapdish, both of which were gifted to Coppola.
26.
The first 15 minutes of Somewhere feature no dialogue.
27.
The camera lenses Coppola used in Somewhere are the same ones her father used in 1983’s Rumble Fish.
Universal / cCourtesy Everett Collection
28.
Benicio del Toro’s Somewhere cameo, was spoiled when Robert Schwartzman and other members of the band Rooney (who also appeared in the film) blogged about it.
Kate Green / Getty Images
29.
The Bling Ring is the third of Coppola’s collaborations with Kirsten Dunst.
A24
Dunst appears very briefly in a cameo as herself at a nightclub.
30.
Paris Hilton, who was a victim of the IRL Bling Ring burglaries, also cameoed as herself at the club.
31.
Hilton let Coppola film inside her home.
Jason Laveris / FilmMagic
“[Sofia] said that she loved my house and really wanted to shoot there,” Hilton told Racked at the movie’s premiere. “She said it would be so impossible to recreate.”
32.
The Bling Ring is the first movie Emma Watson appeared in that wasn’t based on a book (though it was based on a Vanity Fair article).
A24 / courtesy Everett Collection
All the Harry Potter movies were based on books, of course, as were The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Tale of Despereaux, and My Week With Marilyn.
33.
The Bling Ring is A24’s fourth-ever film.
A24 / courtesy Everett Collection
34.
The Beguiled is the fourth and most recent of Coppola’s collaborations with Kirsten Dunst.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
35.
It’s also Coppola’s second time working with Elle Fanning, after Somewhere.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
36.
The Beguiled is Coppola’s third film adaptation of a book, after The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette (based on Antonia Fraser’s biography).
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
THE BEGUILED, from left: Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, 2017. ph: Ben Rothstein/ © Focus Features /Courtesy Everett Collection
37.
Coppola became the second-ever woman to win the Best Director award at Cannes for The Beguiled.
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38.
A number of The Beguiled scenes were shot inside Jennifer Coolidge’s New Orleans home.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
39.
Coppola wrote The Beguiled screenplay with Nicole Kidman in mind.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
“I think she’s unique,” Coppola told the LA Times. “It was like watching a virtuoso or an incredible athlete. We’d do a scene, and she’d have five different emotions going on at the same time.”
40.
On the Rocks marks the third collaboration between Coppola and Bill Murray.
A24/Apple TV+ / courtesy Everett Collection
In addition to Lost in Translation, she directed his musical, A Very Murray Christmas, in 2015.
41.
It’s also her first film distributed by a streaming service.
A24/Apple TV+ / courtesy Everett Collection
Apple and A24 served as co-distributors, and after about three weeks in theaters, it began streaming on Apple TV+.
42.
Rashida Jones, who plays Laura in On the Rocks, was a student in an acting class Coppola used to workshop her script for Lost in Translation. Jones played the role of Charlotte.
John Shearer / Getty Images
44.
Coppola screened On the Rocks for her family — including her parents — during the COVID-19 lockdown.
A24/Apple TV+ / courtesy Everett Collection
45.
On the Rocks is one of the rare occasions Coppola inserted a personal part of herself into a character.
A24/Apple TV+ / courtesy Everett Collection
She told IndieWire, “I was thinking about living in New York, having young kids, looking at the world around me, how I could reflect that moment of getting your bearings. There’s a bit of an identity crisis — how do I connect with who I was before all that and still work?”
46.
Coppola prides herself on providing a feminine point of view with her movies.
Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
“I just feel like I have a feminine point of view and I’m happy to put that out there,” she told The Guardian. “We certainly have enough masculine ones… I mean in my first movie I felt like making something for teenage girls. I looked at the movies they made for teenage girls and thought: Why can’t they have beautiful photography? Why shouldn’t we treat that audience with respect? That was something I missed when I was that age: I wished the movies weren’t so condescending. So I guess I’ve always just made the films that I’d have wanted to see.”
47.
Coppola’s husband, Thomas Mars, has appeared on every one of her film’s soundtracks.
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They met when he played drums on Air’s “Playground Love” under his pseudonym, Gordon Tracks, for The Virgin Suicides. He also appeared in the film uncredited as a prom attendee. His band, Phoenix, can be heard in all the rest of her movies.
48.
Coppola’s films are often reactionary to the movie preceding it.
Sony Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection, Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection
Lost in Translation takes place in a big city, unlike the small-town setting of The Virgin Suicides. Somewhere is a simple, minimalist story compared to the lavishness of Marie Antoinette. Of The Beguiled, Coppola told Entertainment Weekly, “I knew that after that movie I wanted to do something beautiful — that’s all I knew. [The Bling Ring] was in such a tacky, ugly world, and I wanted to cleanse myself.”
49.
Coppola prefers to work with smaller budgets, which she’s said provides more creative freedom than larger ones.
Mikki Ansin / Getty Images
“There’s so many cooks in the kitchen because it’s more about business than art,” she told The Guardian.
50.
While Coppola involves her father in her projects, it’s important to her to remain independent (which is why she made a point to secure the rights to The Virgin Suicides without his help).
Dominik Bindl / Getty Images
She told The Telegraph, “I show him my cut when I’m editing and sometimes he makes suggestions. I have a lot of respect for him and I value his opinion but in the end, I always do it the way I feel is right for me and the movie.”
What’s your favorite Sofia Coppola movie? Sound off in the comments!
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