Wolfgang Petersen, ‘Air Force One’ and ‘Das Boot’ director, dead at 81

Wolfgang Petersen died Friday at age 81.
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Academy Award-nominated director Wolfgang Petersen — who rose to fame along with his German-language movie “Das Boot” — has died. He was 81.

Petersen died of pancreatic most cancers within the arms of his spouse of practically 50 years, Maria-Antoinette, on Friday at his house in Brentwood, Los Angeles, a spokesperson for the Petersen household, Michelle Bega, advised The Submit.

Born in Emden, Germany, Petersen started his directing profession within the Sixties however gained reputation in 1981 with “Das Boot,” a World Warfare II movie that earned six Oscar nominations with two particularly for Petersen for guiding and screenwriting.

He would go on to make quite a few action-thrillers, together with “Enemy Mine,” “Shattered,” “Outbreak,” “Poseidon” and “Troy,” and he directed big-name stars similar to Clint Eastwood in 1993’s “Within the Line of Fireplace,” Harrison Ford in “Air Pressure One” (1997) and George Clooney in 2000’s “The Excellent Storm.” Different A-listers he labored with included Brad Pitt, Rene Russo, Glenn Shut, Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman.

Wolfgang Petersen is proven with Clint Eastwood on the set of the 1993 film “Within the Line of Fireplace.”

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Wolfgang Petersen and the author Lothar-Günther Buchheim sit within the unique duplicate submarine for “Das Boot” on Oct. 17, 1979.

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Wolfgang Petersen on the set of “Poseidon.”

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Petersen credited the 1952 gunslinging Western “Excessive Midday” — in addition to its star, display screen legend Gary Cooper — as influential to his profession alternative. “I believe ‘Excessive Midday’ made me need to be a director,” he advised The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. 

Along with his spouse, Petersen is survived by his son Daniel and daughter-in-law Berit, in addition to two grandchildren, Maja and Julien.