Eleanor Coppola, matriarch of the filmmaking family, dies at the age of 87

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Eleanor Coppola, documentary director, writer, and mother who won an Emmy Award for making a documentary Hearts of Darkness: The Director’s ApocalypseHe died while surrounded by his family at home in Rutherford, California. She was 87 years old. The Coppola family confirmed the news to The Associated Press. No cause of death was provided. According to her family, she recently completed her third memoir. “I appreciate how my unexpected life has extended and drawn me in so many extraordinary ways and taken me in so many directions beyond my wildest imaginings,” she said in the manuscript.

Born Eleanor Jessie Neal, she met Francis Ford Coppola while working as an assistant art director on his first horror film. Dementia 13. She became pregnant within a few months of dating, and they married in Las Vegas in 1963. Together, the Coppola family raised one of Hollywood’s most famous filmmaking families. Their three children — the late producer and actor Gian Carlo Coppola, Academy Award-nominated writer-director Roman Coppola, and Academy Award-winning writer-director Sofia Coppola — grew up on their father’s film sets and eventually joined the film industry. (Sofia Coppola dedicated her latest biographical film to Priscilla Presley, Priscillato her mother.)

Throughout her decades-long career, Eleanor documented the production of many of her husband’s and children’s projects, including experiments with… Apocalypse now in Hearts of Darkness: The Director’s Apocalypse. At the age of 80, she directed her first feature film, the 2016 romantic comedy Diane Lane Paris can wait. She later followed that up with 2020 Love is love is love.