Coppola, Francis Ford , 1939 - , American film director, b. Detroit. Coppola began his career directing low-budget films and working on screenplays for other directors. He won his first Academy Award for Patton (1970), but established his reputation with The Godfather (1972; Academy Award). In this film, he converted an unambitious novel into a subtle portrait of the immigrant experience in America. He created an even more expansive version of this story in The Godfather Part II (1974; Academy Award). Apocalypse Now (1979) was Coppola's ambitious effort to show Vietnam as America's Heart of Darkness, with Joseph Conrad's story providing the narrative skeleton. His subsequent films, including The Outsiders (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), and Tucker (1987), varied widely in quality, but he returned to top form for The Godfather, Part III (1990), which brought the story of the Corleones into the 1980s. In 1992 Coppola turned to the horror genre with his version of the vampire classic, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

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