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Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola

1939 – present
Film & Entertainment

Francis Ford Coppola is an American filmmaker. One of the leading figures of the New Hollywood, Coppola is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Palmes d'Or, in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. Coppola was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2024, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2025.

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Contemporaries

James Watson
James Watson
87 yr overlap
 Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
87 yr overlap
 Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
87 yr overlap
 Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
87 yr overlap
 Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
87 yr overlap
 Woody Allen
Woody Allen
87 yr overlap
 Tu Youyou
Tu Youyou
87 yr overlap
 Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
87 yr overlap
 Pope Francis
Pope Francis
86 yr overlap
 Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
85 yr overlap
 Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King
83 yr overlap
 Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
82 yr overlap

Their World

Global Events
1939 World War II begins
1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor; US enters WWII
1944 D-Day: Allied invasion of Normandy
1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; WWII ends
1945 United Nations founded
1947 India and Pakistan gain independence
1948 State of Israel established
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted
1949 People's Republic of China proclaimed
1950 Korean War begins
1953 Watson and Crick discover DNA structure
1955 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
1957 Sputnik launched; Space Age begins
1959 Cuban Revolution; Castro takes power
1961 Berlin Wall constructed
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
1963 Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
1964 Civil Rights Act signed in the United States
1969 Apollo 11: first humans walk on the Moon
1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and independence
1973 1973 oil crisis
1975 Fall of Saigon; Vietnam War ends
1979 Iranian Revolution
1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall
1989 Tiananmen Square protests
1990 Nelson Mandela released from prison
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union
1994 Rwandan genocide
1994 End of apartheid; South Africa holds first free elections
1997 Dolly the Sheep cloned
1998 Good Friday Agreement signed in Northern Ireland
2001 September 11 attacks
2003 Human Genome Project completed
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
2008 Global financial crisis
2010 Arab Spring begins
2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster
2015 Paris Agreement on climate change adopted
2016 United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union
2020 COVID-19 pandemic declared
2022 Russia invades Ukraine
In Their Field
1939 The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind released
1941 Orson Welles releases Citizen Kane
1946 Cannes Film Festival established
1950 Kurosawa releases Rashomon; Japanese cinema gains world stage
1960 Fellini releases La Dolce Vita
1960 French New Wave: Godard releases Breathless
1968 Kubrick releases 2001: A Space Odyssey
1972 Coppola releases The Godfather
1975 Spielberg releases Jaws; blockbuster era begins
1977 Star Wars released
1985 Miyazaki co-founds Studio Ghibli
1994 Pulp Fiction revitalizes independent cinema
1995 Toy Story: first fully computer-animated feature film
2009 Avatar pioneers 3D filmmaking technology
2020 Parasite wins Best Picture; first non-English-language winner