1939-
Director, Screenwriter

Apprentice.

When he saw Sergei Eisenstein's Ten Days That Shook the World, sixteen-year-old Francis Ford Coppola decided to become a filmmaker. His success in college as the director of campus shows led to his enrollment in UCLA's film school. Needing money for his education, Coppola took jobs shooting low-budget nudie films and quickie features for B-movie king Roger Corman. The most notable of these were the gory Dementia 13 and The Terror, with Jack Nicholson. While working as a writer for the successful film group Seven Arts, Coppola wrote his first full-length screenplay, You're a Big Boy Now. Coppola, always aggressive and forever a risk taker, managed to persuade some major talent (including Geraldine Page and Julie Harris) to accept supporting roles in the film, which gained some attention on its release in 1966. When Finian's Rainbow (1967), his first directorial effort for a major...