Sofia Coppola's Daughter Grew Up To Be Her Twin
In the film world, Sofia Coppola reigns supreme as the undisputed queen of all things girlhood. As a director, her films have offered rare glimpses into teenage girls' perspectives time and time again. In "The Virgin Suicides," she explored the inner lives of five teen sisters. In "Marie Antoinette," she gave audiences a new take on the doomed teenage queen of France. In 2023's "Priscilla," she reexamined the story of Elvis through the eyes of his wife, Priscilla. No one knows teenage girls better than Coppola — except, perhaps, her eldest daughter, Romy Mars.
Mars was born in 2006 in Paris after her parents met on the set of her mother's first film. She was raised surrounded by her mother's projects. Although she has led a relatively quiet, private life so far, in 2023, Mars went viral after posting a cooking video on TikTok, explaining that her mother grounded her for "trying to charter a helicopter." Fans were quick to point out that Mars not only acted like a Coppola heroine, but that her video was, in a way, a Coppola-esque short film. Although Coppola once confessed that her daughters are wholly uninterested in her work, it seems that Mars may have more in common with her mother than either of them thought.
Romy Mars' parents met on the set of The Virgin Suicides
Sofia Coppola made her directorial feature debut with 1999's "The Virgin Suicides." On the set of the film, Coppola met the frontman of the French band Phoenix, Thomas Mars. Mars had been brought onto the project to contribute to the film's haunting score. They seemed to find artistic kindred spirits in each other and continued to collaborate over the years, with Mars playing on the soundtracks to "Lost in Translation," Somewhere," "Marie Antoinette," "The Bling Ring," and "The Beguiled."
Coppola was married to Spike Jonze when she first met Mars, but after her divorce in 2003, the pair began a romantic relationship. "It's hard to differentiate the work from the private life, but I've always felt a really strong connection watching her movies," Mars told Dazed in 2017, referring to Coppola's work. "There are things in her movies that only make sense once you see them."
As such, Mars grew up with parents whose romantic partnership and professional collaboration were almost one and the same.
Romy Mars was born in Paris but became a New York kid
Romy Mars was born in November 2006 in Paris. Not only was her father French, but at the time, Sofia Coppola was in the midst of promoting her latest film, "Marie Antoinette" in the French capital. "It's kind of uncomfortable having to do this [promotional] stuff right now," she said to The Guardian, shortly before Mars was born. "It's hard to, um, sit right."
Coppola and her partner, Thomas Mars, continued to live in Paris with Romy when she was young. Coppola then had Romy's sister, Cosima, in 2010. Soon after, the family moved to New York for the sake of the children's schooling. "We live in the West Village, which feels like its own different world, the kids go to school there, and it's a nice place to be," Coppola explained to The Guardian in 2017. "Tom's band is still based in Paris, and there's our French family, so we'll go there in the summer. So we get a bit of both." As Coppola also told the Financial Times in 2023, even though Romy and her sister spend summers in France with their cousins, they had become "total New York kids" after going to school there.
Like her mother, Romy Mars is part of a long line of filmmakers
Sofia Coppola didn't exactly have an ordinary childhood — after all, she was born into a family filled with Hollywood heavy hitters. And Coppola's daughter, Romy Mars, had much the same experience. Coppola is the third child of famed director Francis Ford Coppola. Other members of the family include Nicolas Cage, Talia Shire, and director Roman Coppola.
Growing up in such an illustrious family, Sofia was always surrounded by artists and Hollywood big shots. "Everyone in my family is in the film business," she said to The Times in 2004. "I had a 20-year tutorial on film in my own home." Eleanor, Sofia's mother, gave up dreams of working in Hollywood to raise her children, but she remained hugely influential for Sofia. "My mother was always filming or photographing everything on location," Sofia said to W.
In many ways, Romy has had a very similar childhood, filled with parental inspiration. Like her mother, Romy grew up surrounded by artists. She also grew up watching her mother create films. "I like that they don't even think they can't do anything," Sofia told The Gentlewoman, adding, "Obviously, each generation paves the way for the next."
Sofia Coppola took a year off to raise her daughter
After Romy Mars was born, her mother Sofia Coppola took a year off from filmmaking to raise her. "After my daughter was born, I took a year off, and I learned a different pace," Coppola told The Gentlewoman. Naturally, having Mars quickly changed how Coppola worked. "[W]hen I started writing, I realized that things had changed because I used to stay up all night writing and suddenly I had to change her on a tight schedule," she added in an interview with The Talks. In another interview with People, she joked that her new life as a full-time mother was "a lot of heating bottles, so that's what I do all day."
Later, Coppola was inspired by that first year with Mars when she wrote "On the Rocks." "I'm just trying to take where I was at that moment in my life where my kids were younger ... that adjustment," she said to The Independent.
Sofia Coppola chose to raise her daughter privately
Even though Romy Mars was born into Hollywood royalty, she hasn't grown up in the spotlight. In fact, her mother, Sofia Coppola, was careful to give her as normal a childhood as possible. As she told The Guardian in 2017, "I don't want them ever to be jaded," she says. "I never saw the point of taking little kids to movie premieres and stuff. I just want them to have a childhood."
And by the sounds of things, Mars isn't too bothered by her mother's celebrity status.Over the years, Coppola has mentioned her daughter's disdain for her a few times. "I live with a 10-year-old who thinks I'm very uncool," she confessed to The Guardian in 2017. And in 2023, she told The New York Times, "[My daughters] think I'm lame."
Although Mars went viral after posting her first and only TikTok video in 2023, as of 2024, she no longer has any public social media accounts. As her mother reflected to The Hollywood Reporter, "We were raised to be so private, and social media is so the opposite of how I grew up." It sounds like Coppola had a guarded, private childhood, despite her own "nepo baby" status — and it seems she may be trying to raise Mars in exactly the same way.
Romy Mars grew up on her mother's film sets
As a child, Romy Mars spent plenty of time on set with her mother. As Sofia Coppola told The Talks, she found it difficult to manage her time as both a mother and a director. "Now [our daughters] just come with us [to set]," she said. Mars spent time on the sets of 2010's "Somewhere," as actor Stephen Dorff recalled to Interview Magazine. In 2016, Mars and her sister also visited the set of "The Beguiled." In 2023, Mars was also a familiar face on the set of "Priscilla."
As Coppola explained to the Financial Times, one of the reasons that she brought Mars to set was so that she could experience what a career in the film industry might look like. "It's exciting to see all the different things you can do," she said. After experiencing so many sets, Mars is now "into music and acting and stuff," Coppola said.
This is yet another way that Mars' childhood has been just like her mother's — Coppola was also a frequent visitor to her father's sets. As Coppola told The Toronto Star, Mars was just a toddler when she visited the set of "Somewhere" — and it was pretty eerie. "I think seeing my daughter on set — I have pictures of me sitting on my dad's lap on the set of 'The Godfather II' at that age — it was funny to see my daughter visiting me there," she said.
She has her mother's sense of style
As a teenager, Sofia Coppola was something of a New York It-girl. "It was the grunge era, and that's when I met Marc Jacobs," she told Bustle. "My friends and I would sometimes go to New York Fashion Week." Back then, Coppola recalled, one of the biggest grunge trends involved wearing literal baby T-shirts. "We would go to Sears and buy those packs of baby T-shirts and wear those in that Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys era," she said.
Well, as it turns out, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Her daughter, Romy Mars, ended up trying out the very same looks when she was a teen. It's "funny to see my 13-year-old daughter wearing [the same thing] now," Coppola said back in 2020. Of course, fashion trends are cyclical — but it's safe to say that both Coppola and her daughter share the same sense of style.
She made her modeling debut in 2020 in a campaign befitting of Sofia Coppola herself
Sofia Coppola's friendship with Marc Jacobs began in the '90s. "I was drawn to her manner, her behavior, her life, her ambitions and creativity ... She represented everything I am drawn to — talent, style, creativity, a unique 'vision and voice,'" Jacobs told Dazed in 2015. She even directed the commercial for his signature perfume, Daisy — the famous ad, which features teen girls in a field of daisies, is a perfect example of the Coppola style.
So, it came as no surprise when, at 14, Coppola's daughter, Romy Mars, made her modeling debut with a series of photos to promote Jacobs' Heaven line. "I met you Romy shortly after you were born," wrote Jacobs on Instagram. "It is a beautiful trip watching you grow up and becoming such a cool and beautiful young woman. ... These portraits of you take me back in spirit to those good old early '90s days where the beginning of a long and lasting love story first began." He is referring, of course, to his friendship with Mars' mother.
That same year, Mars also made her first public appearance at an official event, joining her mother at New York Fashion Week.
Romy Mars went viral after Sofia Coppola grounded her
In 2023, Romy Mars suddenly became a viral sensation after posting a TikTok video. In the since deleted video, Mars explained that she was making a vodka sauce pasta after being grounded because she "tried to charter a helicopter from New York to Maryland on my dad's credit card because I wanted to have dinner with my camp friend."
The chaotic video continued as Mars explained that she didn't know the difference between garlic and onions. "I'm embarrassed, I'm embarrassed," she said, before cutting to an image of her grinning an holding a giant knife. Then, she explained that she was making the video because her parents' "biggest rule" is that she can't have public social media "because they don't want me to be a nepotism kid" — and since she was already grounded, she thought she might as well break the rule. As the video continued, she introduced viewers to Ari, her "babysitter's boyfriend" — because, she said, "my parents are never home so these are my replacement parents."
The video quickly went viral, with Coppola fans noting that Mars had inadvertently made a short film that could have been directed by her mother. Jezebel called it a "cinematic masterpiece," while Time noted that "the internet thinks she's the next great director." Maybe Mars has more in common with her mother than even she knew!
Sofia Coppola was not on board with her daughter's TikTok
Even though the internet found Romy Mars' TikTok video hilarious, her mother did not enjoy it. As Sofia Coppola told The Hollywood Reporter, she interpreted the video as Mars' attempt at teenage rebellion. She went on to say that she wasn't thrilled about how her family was suddenly in the public eye. "I got lots of compliments on her filmmaking. And comedy. She's funny," she said. "But people discussing my parenting publicly is not what I would've hoped for."
Perhaps one part of Mars' video that Coppola didn't love was when Mars spoke about her parents always being away from home. As it turns out, Coppola's demanding career is something she feels very conflicted about. In fact, as she told The Guardian in 2023, she found herself crying because of it after receiving some bad news about funding during the filming of "Priscilla." "I was on location and away from my daughters who I felt were needing a mother," she said.
Romy Mars went viral again after videos of her on the set of Priscilla were released
Shortly after Romy Mars went viral on TikTok for her cooking video, she went viral for clips that showed her on the set of her mother's film, "Priscilla." In one clip, Mars can be seen fangirling over the film's star, Jacob Elordi. "Oh my God, Jacob Elordi," she screeched when she spotted him on set. Then, Coppola asked Mars if she wanted a picture with Elordi taken on her film camera. Hilariously, Mars replied, "Can you take one of me and Jacob on my phone?" to which her mother replied simply, "No." "I don't care that she is the director of this film, the film is about to be over," laughed a wounded Mars.
Luckily, Mars got an excellent photo later on, when Elordi, in full Elvis costume, delivered her 16th birthday cake to set.
Later, Coppola spoke to Grazia about the experience of bringing her daughter to set. "Having a 16-year-old on the set with Jacob Elordi, it was — it was funny," she said. "I'm glad they're not jaded."
She gives her mother a new perspective on the feminine experience
Sofia Coppola built an entire career around examining the teen experience. Just before Romy Mars was born, Coppola confessed to IGN that she didn't know exactly how having a child would change her films. "I'm sure it changes your perspective," she said. Well, she was right.
Now, as the mother of a teenage girl, Coppola has a whole new perspective on what life as a teenage girl is about — and what being the parents of a teenage girl is all about. As she told AnOther, her daughter was especially influential for how she approached her 2023 film "Priscilla." "[M]y older daughter is 16. To be the mother of a 16-year-old while I'm reading about Priscilla rebelling and wanting to go and live with Elvis and feeling for the parents — it was a unique moment to be thinking about both sides of that," she said.
In an interview with NME, Coppola explained that having a Gen Z-age daughter opened her eyes to a whole new generation of teens. As she said of her process on "Priscilla," "I still see women in relationships where they let the men make all the decisions, even now ... my daughters look at the story and say, 'I would never let a man tell me what to do.' ... I have this perspective in between the two generations." Based on the Coppola dynasty so far, Mars may very well follow in her footsteps.