Eleanor Coppola, Emmy-Winning Documentary Filmmaker, Dead at 87

Eleanor Coppola, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and artist, has died. She was 87.

Coppola died at her home in Rutherford, Calif., her family said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Eleanor’s daughter Sofia Coppola did not attend the New York Film Festival in early October for the screening of her film Priscilla in order to spend time with her mother.

"I'm so sorry to not be there with you, but I'm with my mother, to whom this film is dedicated," the writer-director wrote in a statement read by producer Youree Henley on Oct. 6.

Born in Los Angeles on May 4, 1936, Eleanor was raised in Orange County, but returned to Los Angeles to study at the University of California, Los Angeles. There, she met her husband Francis Ford Coppola, 84, while working as an assistant art director on the set of his 1963 directorial debut Dementia 13, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The two married in February 1963 and welcomed three children: sons Gian-Carlo, who died at age 22 in a boating accident in 1986, and Roman, 58; and daughter Sofia, 55.

Eleanor was best known for directing the Emmy-winning 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which follows Francis making his 1979 war drama Apocalypse Now.

She also directed documentaries regarding the making of Sofia's The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Marie Antoinette (2006).

She made her narrative feature debut at the age of 80 with 2016’s Paris Can Wait and most recently made 2020's Love Is Love Is Love, according to her IMDb page.

“I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, and a woman’s role was to support her husband and make a nice home for him,” Eleanor explained to THR in 2016 about making films later in her life. “I was frustrated that I didn’t have much time to pursue my interests."

She continued, "Young women today have no concept of that. My daughter and her generation, and generations after that, they take for granted that they’re going to do whatever is their calling. There’s not going to be a question of their role or if they have to give it up because they’re a wife and a mother.”

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“I’m this housewife who suddenly decided she’s going to write a film and actually direct it,” Eleanor said of her narrative feature debut. “It was terrifying, but part of the challenge was cutting through all of your fears and just going for it.”

Eleanor also published two nonfiction books: Notes: The Making of Apocalypse Now and Notes on a Life, which examines her and Francis's life together.

She is survived by her husband, son Roman and daughter Sofia and two grandchildren: Sofia’s daughter Romy, 16, whom she shares with husband Thomas Mars, and Gian-Carlo’s daughter Gia, 36, who was born after her father's untimely death.