Article Author:
Associated Press
Jake Coyle
NEW YORK (AP) — The Germans who catapulted him to Hollywood blockbusters with the WWII submarine epic 'Das Boot' filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen. Including the movies "In the Line of Fire," "Air Force One," and "The Perfect Storm," he was 81 years old.
Petersen died Friday at his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his representative Michelle Vega said.
Born in Emden, Germany, Petersen made two of his feature films before his 1982 breakthrough, 'Das Boot'. His 149-minute 'Das Boot' (the original cut was his 210-minute), which went on to become the highest-grossing film in German cinema history, is set in his U-boat in Germany, which is doomed in the Battle of the Atlantic. Jürgen Plochnow was the submarine's commander. Known as an anti-war masterpiece, Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars, including directing and adapting the 1973 Lothar-Gunther Buchheim best-selling novel Petersen.
Growing up on Germany's north coast, the sea has long been a fascination for Petersen. He returned to the issue in his 2000 disaster film The Perfect Storm, a true story of a fishing boat lost at sea.
"The power of water is unbelievable," Petersen said in his 2009 interview. “As a child, I was always impressed by its strength: all the damage it can do when it flips over within hours and crashes against the shore.”
Das Boot established Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he worked on war (2004's Brad Pitt-starring Troy), the pandemic (1995's Ebola virus-inspired 'outbreak'). ) and other maritime disasters (2006's "Poseidon" about the capsize of an ocean liner).
Petersen has his second wife Maria Antoinette, a German screenwriter and assistant director whom he married in 1978, with his son Daniel He Petersen and his two children. has a grandson of
