Francis Ford Coppola is speaking out after it had been reported he was admitted to a hospital in Rome for a cardiac procedure.
The filmmaker, 86, took to his social media page with a photo of himself from the Megalopolis photocall at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 and assured his followers he was okay.
"Da Dada (what my kids call me) is fine, taking an opportunity while in Rome to do the update of my 30 year old afib procedure with its inventor, a great Italian doctor – Dr. Andrea Natale!" he penned, making a nod to his two kids Roman and Sofia Coppola, plus their families.
"I am well!" he concluded. A representative of his also confirmed to Italian media reports, per NBC News: "Mr. Coppola went in for a scheduled update procedure and is resting nicely. All is well."
Sofia responded to her father's statement with a heart emoji, with Sharon Stone also commenting: "We love you honey," and Andy Garcia sharing a string of praying emojis. Kathrine Narducci also wrote: "God bless you and your family. You are an American treasure, we love you."
The director has continued to remain active well into his 80s, even sharing another social media post soon after confirming his surgery went well, a previous interview with the Daily Stoic podcast.
He reflected during his conversation on the death of his wife Eleanor Coppola last April at the age of 87. The pair were married for over 60 years and were an integral part of the Coppola film machine, with Eleanor acting as a documentarian and photographer behind the scenes of his projects while also caring for their family while in production.
"I just lost my wife of 60 years and it's sort of devastating, but there was a Marcus Aurelius quote that really lifted me," the auteur recalled. "Which was that if you lose a loved one, honor her. In a sense, try to be more like her and then she'll live on in your actions."
"My wife was very good – if someone was alone or sick or something, she'd call them up and be comforting to them," he gushed. "And I'm not like that, you know? So I started to do that."
"People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren, I call them up and say, Hey, how are you? And they are so pleased and so kind. And that's how I keep my wife in my life."
He similarly shared the same quote with Rolling Stone in a conversation soon after her passing, and opened up about her health in the months leading up to her death.
"She had a noncancerous tumor called a thymoma," the Apocalypse Now filmmaker shared. "Fourteen years ago, when it was discovered, the doctor said, 'It's a little big to take out right now. If she does three months of chemo, then it should make it smaller and I can take it out.'"
"And Eleanor said, 'I'm not doing chemo.' She wanted to do what she wanted to do; she made several movies, and ultimately, it just got so big and so painful that she did not want to live anymore."