Iconic film director Francis Ford Coppola has been rushed to hospital in Italy.
The film-maker, who won 15 Oscars in his illustrious career, is undergoing heart surgery, according to unconfirmed local reports. The 86-year-old had been in the country for the Magna Grecia Festival in Calabria to present his controversial movie, Megalopolis, which stars Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, and Giancarlo Esposito.
It is understood the movie director entered the hospital this morning for scheduled heart surgery but after arriving, he reportedly experienced a mild cardiac arrhythmia and was placed under observation before surgery.
The director of The Godfather films had spent part of this summer in Italy scouting locations to shoot in Autumn. He also directed Apocalypse Now, Peggy Sue Got Married and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
(Image: Getty Images for Netflix)
His wife, Eleanor, died last spring.
While at the Italian film festival, he said to the crowd: “Young people tell me the world is a mess, but I tell them there’s no problem that humanity can’t solve. We must build a great new future, and do it together for the sake of our children. And tonight, we’re taking a leap into the future.”
The legendary director has close ties to the country after his grandfather, Agostino, emigrated from Bernalda in the early 1900s. In 1989, Francis became an honoray citizen of the town he spends a lot of his time.
Earlier this month, the director appeared at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts to take part in a Q&A session following a screening of Megalopolis.
The decades-in-the-making project, which received mixed reviews, stars Adam Driver as a rich and tortured visionary trying to build a utopian city while rowing with a conservative mayor. The film cost a whopping $120million but grossed just over $14million worldwide.
(Image: Getty Images for Warner Bros. Di)
However, Coppola wasn’t bothered by the box office results and said: “I lost my wife a year ago, around this time. But my attitude for death is that I always lived my life so that when I was at the moment approaching death, I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this and I wish I had done that.’ Instead, I say to myself, ‘I got to do this.’”
“I got to see my daughter win an Oscar. I got to see my father win an Oscar. I’m going to be so busy saying all the things I got to do that when I die, I’m not going to notice it.
“When I die, I’m not going to notice it. You know how your electric toothbrush just shuts off when you least expect it? That’s what death is like.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
