SCENE CHANGE

Sofia Coppola is an award-winning director, a mother, a wife and a warm, funny woman you’d like to have as a friend. Her latest film reunites her with Bill Murray, but this time he’s a father figure. (And no, we still don’t know what he said to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation.)

- JONATHAN DEAN

SOFIA COPPOLA WAS FIVE YEARS OLD IN 1977 WHEN HER FATHER, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA — FRESH OFF THE WILD SHOOT FOR APOCALYPSE NOW — INTERVIEWED HER.

‘I’m a little fishy, and I swim in the water and have two brothers who are fishies,’ she said, before counting in Cantonese. Later, father asked daughter to record a message for her future self. ‘I am Sofia,’ she said. ‘And when I grow up, I want to be a teacher or a nurse. I like being Sofia, because there’s a lot of fun things that I know how to do.’

Forty-three years later, Sofia is on a Zoom call from Napa in California, where her family is and where she grew up. ‘Oh, my God,’ she says, reminded of the recording. ‘Yes, my dad interviewed me when I was a little kid.’ The extended family has been together for lockdown – her husband, Thomas Mars; daughters Romy and Cosima; and brother Roman (one of the ‘fishies’), with his children too. ‘It’s been okay,’ she says. ‘Our kids are a little younger, 10 and 13. But it’s hard for a teenager stuck at home with us.’ Sofia is in a shirt and specs, in a room that looks like it’s waiting to be decorated. Lively chat fills rooms off-camera.

It is in Napa that her father makes his wine, including the Sofia Chardonnay. ‘Light in spirit. Elegant in character,’ the website reads.