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 said on Tuesday German press agency announced. 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 was immediately successful 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.
“For me, life has always been a journey through the world”
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’s success story only suffered with the film “Poseidon” (2006). The disaster thriller, which cost around 160 million dollars, flopped worldwide. It was a shock, the director admitted. “I had to take some time off and think about a lot of things.”
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.
In 2021, in the middle of the Corona pandemic, Petersen was planning another directing project in Germany – a love story about a KGB agent and a young East German, based on a true story, shortly before the Wall was built. But that shouldn’t happen anymore. The pandemic had forced the director to take a longer break. At the age of 80 he lamented about it and hoped to return to everyday work soon. “You have to go out again. For me, life has always been a journey through the world, with always new people and teams.”