Talia Shire¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- April 25, 1946, Lake Success, New York — as Talia Rose Coppola
- Family
- Sister of Francis Ford Coppola; daughter of Carmine
- Trained
- Yale School of Drama
- Godfather role
- Connie Corleone, all three films
- Oscar nominations
- 2 — Supporting Actress, The Godfather Part II (1975); Actress, Rocky (1977)
The nepotism accusation that turned out to be wrong, and the one performance in the trilogy that changes most between the first film and the third.
Casting, and the charge¶
She was cast as Connie by her brother, and the accusation followed immediately and has never entirely gone away. Coppola has acknowledged the awkwardness and defended her on the work.
The defense holds up. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Part II and then, two years later, for Best Actress for Rocky — two nominations in three years, in two entirely different registers, neither of them in a film directed by her brother.
The comparison worth making is with Sofia Coppola in Part III, who got the identical accusation with none of the mercy. Talia Shire was a Yale-trained working actor cast in a supporting role. Sofia Coppola was an 18-year-old non-actor handed a lead eight days before shooting. The difference matters, and the ferocity of the reaction to the second one still doesn't quite scale to it.
Connie¶
The arc is the largest in the trilogy after Michael's: a bride crying at her own wedding, then a battered wife, then a wreck, then — by 1979 — the most dangerous person in the family.
Shire plays the middle stretch hardest. The scene where she accuses Michael of murdering her husband, in front of Kay, is written to be dismissed as hysteria and performed so that you can see her being right and being disbelieved simultaneously.
In Part III she has become the family's fixer and eventual poisoner, sanctioning Vincent's hits and handing Don Altobello the cannoli herself. Shire plays it with total calm, which is what makes it land.
See Connie Corleone.
Rocky¶
Adrian in Rocky (1976) and its sequels is the other role she is known for, and it is a completely different instrument — a painfully shy pet-store clerk who spends the first act barely able to make eye contact.
The nomination in 1977 was for the first film. She appeared in five of the sequels, and Adrian's death between Rocky V and Rocky Balboa is treated by that series as its own great loss.
Elsewhere¶
She had a substantial career outside both franchises — Old Boyfriends (1979), Windows, Prophecy, and a good deal of television — and later moved into producing and directing, including One Night Stand (1995).
She married the composer David Shire (whose name she kept) and then the producer Jack Schwartzman. Her sons are the actor and musician Jason Schwartzman and the producer Robert Schwartzman. Her nephew is Nicolas Cage; her niece is Sofia Coppola.