Eleanor Coppola has died at 87

Eleanor Coppola has died at her Rutherford, California home.

The Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker died on 12 April, her family revealed in a statement to the Associated Press.

No cause of death was given

Coppola was best known for directing the Emmy-winning 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which follows her husband Francis Ford Coppola as he makes his 1979 war drama Apocalypse Now.

Born in Los Angeles in 1936, Coppola was raised in Orange County, but returned to LA to study at the University of California. It was there that she met her husband, while working as an assistant art director on the set of his 1963 directorial debut Dementia 13.

The two married in February that same year.

The couple had three children together: sons Gian-Carlo (who tragically died in a boating accident in 1986) and Roman, and daughter Sofia. All three acted in their father’s films.

“I don’t know what the family has given except I hope they’ve set an example of a family encouraging each other in their creative process whatever it may be,” Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017.

“It happens in our family that everyone chose to sort of follow in the family business. We weren’t asking them to or expecting them to, but they did.”

Coppola was 87. She is survived by her husband, two children and several grandchildren.