Coppola first appeared in film as a baby boy

Lost In Translation has quietly won the hearts of many viewers with its low-key tale of two insomniac Americans meeting in Tokyo hotel bar.

For Coppola, its writer and director, it has served to cement the reputation she established with her 1999 directorial debut The Virgin Suicides.

Coppola was effectively "baptised" into the cinema, first seen as a new-born baby - a boy - during the final scenes of her father Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 classic The Godfather.

Throughout her childhood and teens she played minor roles in a string of high-profile films including Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and Peggy Sue Got Married.

She has become one of Hollywood's best-known young directors

But it was through her assured performance as Mary Corleone in her father's final part of The Godfather trilogy in 1990 that she leapt to the attention of the film-going public.

Apart from a cameo role in the Star Wars movie Phantom Menace in 1999, she remained largely quiet throughout the 1990s.

But at the age of just 28 she hit gold with her first outing as a director on The Virgin Suicides, a dark comedy about the five doomed Lisbon sisters based on Jeffrey Eugenides' book.

With its memorably haunting soundtrack by French dance artists Air, the movie was well received by critics and filmgoers taken by its melancholic quality.

At the time Coppola was honest about the professional advantages the family name had afforded her during production.

She admitted: "I think this movie would have taken maybe twice as many years to get made if my last name was Smith.

Coppola was at art school before her movie career

"Everyone has to do whatever they can to get a movie made. I get phone calls returned probably faster because of my last name."

But she added: "You have to prove yourself, and maybe even work harder to prove yourself because of your name."

While in high school Coppola worked at Chanel in Paris for two summers, and later attended art school, becoming involved in fashion design.

But her love of movies engendered by spending time on her father's film sets was never far away. However this did not make it any easier for her to pursue her career at first.

"But I didn't have the guts to say, 'I want to be a director', especially coming from that family," she said.

Last year she announced she was splitting from her husband, Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze, after four years of marriage.