Biography
The nephew of film demigod
Francis Ford Coppola and the brother of
Nicolas Cage, Christopher Coppola caught the family filmmaking bug early on and reportedly began shooting Super-8 narratives (many starring his soon-to-be-famous sibling) at a tender age. Coppola demonstrated a particularly strong affinity for musical composition as well, and in fact majored in that subject (in lieu of cinema studies) as an undergraduate at Redlands College in California, before then doing graduate work in film at the San Francisco Art Institute. Coppola bowed with his first feature credit exactly one year after graduation -- the 1988 horror film
Dracula's Widow -- but despite a truly interesting cast including
Josef Sommer (in a rare lead),
Lenny Von Dohlen, and
Sylvia Kristel, and an unusual premise, the film was critically panned. Coppola then proceeded to craft an ongoing series of pictures that each offered an inventive variation on a traditional genre and distinctly evoked films of Hollywood past; among many other projects, for example, he reworked the post-noir thriller with
Deadfall (1993), the Western with
Gunfighter (1997), and the Hollywood melodrama with
Bel Air (2000). Coppola's directorial efforts culminated in his film
Bloodhead (2004), which he directed, edited, and produced; starring cult icons
Lynda Carter and
Frank Gorshin, it tells of a bizarre creature terrorizing the residents of a small desert town.
Beginning in the late '90s (in 1998), Coppola also essayed a series of acting roles, usually bit parts that found him parlaying his beefy, brawny, and imposing frame into a series of tough-natured characterizations. Credits include
Forbidden Warrior (2004),
Postal (2007), and BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007). ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide