Eleanor Coppola, who documented the making of some of her husband’s by Francis Ford Coppola iconic films, including the infamously tortured Apocalypse Now production, and who raised a family of filmmakers, has died. She was 87.
Coppola died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Rutherford, Calif., her family said in a statement. No cause of death was given.
Eleanor, who grew up in Orange County, California, met Francis while working as an assistant art director on his directorial debut, the 1963 Roger Corman-produced horror film Dementia 13. (She had studied design at UCLA.) Months after meeting, Eleanor became pregnant, and the couple married in Las Vegas in February 1963.
Their firstborn, Gian-Carlo, quickly became a regular in his father’s films, as did their subsequent children, Roman (born 1965) and Sofia (born 1971). Having acted in their father’s films and growing up on the set, they would all act in the films.
“I don’t know what the family gave, but I hope they set an example of a family that encourages each other in their creative process, whatever it is,” Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017. “It’s happening in our family that each chose to follow in the family business. We didn’t ask or expect them to, but they did. At one point Sophia said, “The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Gian-Carlo, who was seen in the background in many of his father’s films and began shooting a second camera, died at the age of 22 in a boating accident in 1986. He was killed while riding in a boat piloted by Griffin O’Neill, son of Ryan O’Neill, who was found guilty of negligence.
Roman has directed several of his own films and regularly collaborates with Wes Anderson. He is president of his father’s San Francisco-based film company, American Zoetrope.
Sofia became one of the most acclaimed directors of her generation as a screenwriter and director of films including Lost in Translation and the 2023 Priscilla release. Sofia dedicated this film to her mother.
By joining the family business, Coppola’s children followed in not only their father’s footsteps, but also their mother’s. Starting at 1979’s Apocalypse Now Eleanor often documented life behind the scenes of Francis’ films. Apocalypse Now took 238 days to shoot in the Philippines. Typhoon destroyed sets. Martin Sheen had a heart attack. A member of the construction team was killed.
Eleanor documented much of the chaos in what would become one of the most famous films about filmmaking, 1991’s Hearts of Darkness: The Director’s Apocalypse.
“I was just trying to get busy because we’d been there so long,” Eleanor told CNN in 1991. “They wanted five minutes for a TV commercial or something, and I figured sooner or later I’d be able to get five minutes movie and then lasted up to 15 minutes.
“I just kept shooting, but I had no idea … the evolution of myself that I saw with my camera,” continued Eleanor, who ended up shooting 60 hours of footage. “So it was a surprise for both of us and a life-changing experience.”
Eleanor also published Notes: On the Making of Apocalypse Now in 1979. While the film focuses on the turmoil on set, the book details some of Eleanor’s inner turmoil, including the challenges of being married to a larger-than-life figure . She writes that she was “a woman isolated from my friends, my affairs, and my projects” during their year in Manila. She also openly discusses Frances having an extramarital affair.
“There is a part of me that has been waiting for Frances to leave me or die so I can make my life the way I want it,” Eleanor wrote. “I wonder if I have the guts to do it the way I want it with him in it.”
However, they remained together throughout her life. And Eleanor continued to seek creative outlets for herself. She documented several more of her husband’s films, as well as Roman’s CQ and Sofia’s Marie Antoinette. She wrote a memoir in 2008, Notes on a Life.
In 2016, at the age of 80, Eleanor made her narrative debut in Paris Can Wait, a romantic comedy starring Diane Lane. She followed that up with Love Is Love Is Love in 2020. Originally, Eleanor had only set out to write the script for Paris Can Wait.
“One morning at the breakfast table, my husband said, ‘Well, you should direct it.’ I was completely shocked,” Eleanor told the AP. “But I said, ‘Well, I’ve never written a screenplay before and I’ve never directed, why not?’ I kind of said ‘why not’ to everything.”
Eleanor died just as Francis was getting ready a long-planned, self-financed epic, Metropolis, which is due to premiere next month at the Cannes Film Festival.
She is survived by her husband; her son Roman and his wife Jen, their children Pascale, Marcello and Alessandro; her daughter Sofia and her husband Thomas, their children Romi and Cosima; her granddaughter Gia and her husband Honor and their child Beaumont; and by her brother William Neal and his wife Lisa.
Eleanor recently completed her third memoir, the family said. In the manuscript she writes:
“I appreciate how my unexpected life has stretched and pulled me in so many extraordinary ways and taken me in multiple directions beyond my wildest imagination.”
