Wolfgang Petersen, star director of films such as “Das Boot”, “Outbreak”, “Air Force One” and “Der Sturm” is dead. He died of pancreatic cancer on Friday at the age of 81, as his assistant announced in the evening . He died peacefully surrounded by his family at his home in Brentwood, a part of Los Angeles. His wife Maria was by his side.
Born in Emden and raised in Hamburg, the director learned his craft at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. In 1971 he had success with the “Tatort” thriller “Blechschaden”. The episode “Maturity Certificate” with Nastassja Kinski made him and the very young actress famous overnight. Petersen became a taboo breaker in 1977 with the film “The Consequence”, which is about homosexual love.
The cinema epic “Das Boot” (1981) about the crew of a German submarine in World War II, with Jürgen Prochnow and Herbert Grönemeyer, paved the way for Petersen to Hollywood. Since 1987 the director lived with his wife in Los Angeles. There he brought Hollywood stars like Clint Eastwood (“In the Line of Fire”), Dustin Hoffman (“Outbreak”), Harrison Ford (“Air Force One”), George Clooney (“The Tempest”) and Brad Pitt (” Troy”) in front of the camera. Petersen returned to his homeland in 2016 for a remake of his old television comedy “Four Against the Bank” from the 1970s. The crook film was prominently cast with Til Schweiger, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jan Josef Liefers and Michael “Bully” Herbig.
