Mary first appears in The Godfather Part II as the youngest child of Michael and Kay. She is a young child in the late 1950s. Like Anthony, she does not have a significant role or story arc in the film.
''The Godfather Part III''
Mary is one of the pivotal characters of Godfather Part III, set in 1979–80. Her father's favorite, she is sheltered from the violent world of the Corleone crime family. She falls in love with her cousin, Vincent Mancini, Sonny Corleone's illegitimate son. While the family is traveling in Sicily, Michael tells Mary he disapproves of the romance, believing that Vincent's growing involvement in the "family business" puts her life in danger. He fears that Mary could suffer the same fate as his first wife, Apollonia, who was killed by a car bomb intended for him 30 years earlier. Toward the end of the film, Michael names Vincent as his successor, on condition that he break off his relationship with Mary. After her brother's debut concert, the assassin Mosca tries to kill Michael. One bullet grazes Michael's shoulder, but the other accidentally hits Mary in the torso, fatally wounding her. Michael is devastated by Mary's death.
Casting
Sofia Coppola, the daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, was cast in the role after the original choice, Winona Ryder, discontinued her involvement with the film due to nervous exhaustion. It has been suggested that the situation further damaged Francis Ford Coppola's career and ruined Sofia's before it had even begun. Coppola has said that she never really wanted to act and only did it to help out when her father asked her to. After shooting, she confirmed that she did not want to go into acting. It has also been suggested that Sofia's role in the film may have contributed to its box office performance, which started strongly and then went into decline. Coppola has said that her father based a lot of her character on her while writing the script, before she was even cast into the role. Sofia had herself worried that she had only been given the role because she was the director's daughter, and the role placed a strain on her during the time of shooting that her mother observed in a series of diaries she wrote for Vogue during the filming. After she was critically panned for her performance in The Godfather Part III, for which she was named "Worst Supporting Actress" and "Worst New Star" at the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards, Coppola ended her acting career, although she appeared in the independent filmInside Monkey Zetterland, as well as in the backgrounds of films by her friends and family: for example, she appeared as Saché, one of Queen Padmé Amidala's five handmaidens in George Lucas' . Coppola has since been quoted as saying that she was not hurt by the criticism from her role in The Godfather Part III, because she never especially wanted an acting career.
Sequel novels
Mary appears as a minor character in Mark Winegardner's sequel novels The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge, although in the original novel, Michael's second child is a boy.
Anthony Vito Corleone—Brother; played by Anthony Gounaris in Godfather I, played by James Gounaris in Godfather II, played by Franc D'Ambrosio in Godfather III
