Sofia Coppola Almost Quit Filmmaking After ‘Marie Antoinette’: ‘I Don’t Want to Do This Anymore’

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Sofia Coppola needed to take a “pause” from filmmaking following 2006 film “Marie Antoinette.”

The period piece, which stars Coppola’s longtime collaborator Kirsten Dunst and cousin Jason Schwartzman, received a mixed response at Cannes before winning the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Coppola previously described the film as a “flop” and shared that “nobody saw it,” despite the film making $60 million at the box office against a $40 million budget.

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“I had a great time with Kirsten [Dunst] and Jason [Schwartzman], being in Versailles and in Paris at that time. But it was a lot to manage so many people,” Coppola told Rolling Stone. “I was just worn out, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore.'”

She continued, “[‘Marie Antoinette’] was just a hard shoot, and then I was just over it for a minute. My daughter was born, and I was trying to take a pause. But there’s something kind of addictive about making movies. You get an idea, and it bugs you until you do it.”

The writer-director added, “And then, when I met [cinematographer] Harris Savides and we talked about minimal filmmaking, I got inspired to try to make ‘Somewhere’ and go back to two people in a hotel room, and focus on the action and the story.”

The “Priscilla” auteur summed up, “If I didn’t make anything else, I would feel like I made enough stuff…When I was finishing ‘Priscilla,’ I said to my husband, ‘I don’t want to do this again.’ And he said, ‘You say that every time.'”

Coppola told Vanity Fair earlier this year that production on “Marie Antoinette” was entirely true to her vision.

“I’m always happy that I get to make what I want to make,” Coppola said. “I was happy we got to make that movie, but nobody saw it. It was a flop. So the fact that it’s lived on and people talk about it has been really satisfying because so much work went into it. It makes me happy that now it’s kind of found its way and people enjoy it.”

Coppola compared “Priscilla” to “Marie Antoinette,” calling Priscilla Presley a form of American royalty similar to the ill-fated French queen.

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