Francis Ford Coppola

Born: 7 April 1939
Where: Detroit, Michegan, USA

One of America's most erratic and controversial filmmakers, Ford Coppola is known primarily for his monumental Godfather trilogy.

Winner of five Academy Awards before he was 40, his other notable triumphs have included American Grafitti, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.

The son of an Italian-American flautist and an actress, he first showed an interest in cinema when he made 8mm movies aged just ten.

He attended Hofstra University, where he capped his collegiate career by conceiving, producing and directing the first play ever written and staged entirely by Hofstra students.

From there, Coppola entered UCLA film school in 1960 but his discontent with the classroom led him to direct some soft-core porn films then hire himself out to low-budget king Roger Corman.

His first job for Corman was to dub and re-edit a Russian science fiction film, turning it into a sex-and-violence monster movie entitled Battle Beyond the Stars.

Coppola directed his first feature, the unremarkable Corman-produced Dementia 13, while in Ireland in the summer of 1963.

Working as a scriptwriter he eventually won his first Oscar for co-writing Franklin Schaffner's Patton, although was disappointed with the result.

After the well-received You're A Big Boy Now, Coppola agreed to direct a screen version of Finian's Rainbow, starring Fred Astaire.

It was a failure - the edit cut off Astaire's feat - but it did introduce Coppola to George "Star Wars" Lucas, who would work on his next movie The Rain People.

Things didn't turn out as expected and a heavily debt-ridden Coppola forced the hand of Paramount to cast his choice for The Godfather.

Thanks to producer Bob Evans' faith in him and a timely Oscar for Patton, Coppola survived to bring his monumental epic to the screen, earning his second Oscar.

One of the highest-grossing films in movie history, The Godfather captured the country's imagination by skirting the traditional gangster territory and reinventing itself as a family chronicle.

Coppola launched his friend Lucas' career, producing the 60s nostalgia flick American Graffiti and, following work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby directed the The Conversation.

Next came The Godfather II, which won six Oscars, and Coppola went onto work on Apocalypse Now, a version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

The film tracked a CIA operative (Martin Sheen) traveling up a Cambodian river in search of the legendary Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who had established a bizarre empire deep in the jungle.

Coppola replaced his leading actor after shooting began, the replacement Sheen had a heart attack delaying the production at length and Typhoon Olga destroyed the sets.

Fortunately, the movie was a modest box office hit, winning two Oscars and saving Coppola - who was up to his neck in debut - from ruin.

Apocalypse Now marked the end of Coppola's "golden period" and a succession of box-office disappointments ensued, his films often suffering as a result of his megalomania.

One From the Heart was a major financial and critical bomb, due largely to Coppola's preoccupation with costly high-tech gadgets.

In 1983, Coppola directed two adaptations of teenage-themed novels - The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, both criticized as overly-stylized.

Coppola's run of bad luck continued with The Cotton Club, an ambitious musical set in the famous Harlem jazz club of the 1920s.

He next helmed the light time-travel comedy Peggy Sue Got Married, which behaved respectably at the box office.

An aura of tragedy surrounded Gardens of Stone, a well-acted Vietnam War-era drama played out on the home front, which pleased some critics but not audiences.

During filming, Coppola's son Gian-Carlo was killed in a boating accident.

The far more impressive Tucker: The Man and His Dream starred Jeff Bridges in the role of the real-life 40s car industry visionary.

The Godfather III followed but Coppola's decision to cast his daughter Sofia in a pivotal role was regarded a major flaw although a revised edit went some way to recrifying things.

Next he scored a huge success at the helm of Bram Stoker's Dracula with the help of a stunning production design (Thomas Sanders) and superb cinematography (Michael Ballhaus) and music (Wojciech Kilar).

Jack starred Robin Williams as a child with a disorder that caused him to grow four times faster than normal and have the appearance of a 40-year-old man when he was only 10.

Coppola e picked a proven winner as his next mount, scripting and helming the film adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker.

Upcoming projects include the September 11-influenced sci-fi drama Megalopolis.

Out of the director's chair, Coppola has also executive produced a number of box office hits including Sleepy Hollow and Jeepers Creepers.