Wolfgang Petersen

Wolfgang Petersen
Petersen, during the filming of Air Force One in 1996.
Born	(1941-03-14) 14 March 1941 (age 75) Emden, Lower Saxony, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Film director, film producer, screenwriter
Years active	1965–present
Spouse(s)	Ursula Sieg (div. 1978) Maria Borgel-Petersen (1978–present)

Wolfgang Petersen (born 14 March 1941) is a German film director and screenwriter. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for the 1981 World War II submarine warfare film Das Boot (1981). His other films include The NeverEnding Story (1984), Enemy Mine (1985), In the Line of Fire (1993), Outbreak (1995), Air Force One (1997), The Perfect Storm (2000), Troy (2004), and Poseidon (2006).

Petersen was born on 14 March 1941 in Emden. Emden is a north German community in East Frisia near the Dutch border, where the Ems River flows into the North Sea. From 1953 to 1960, Petersen attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg. In the 1960s he was directing plays at Hamburg's Ernst Deutsch Theater. After studying theater in Berlin and Hamburg, Petersen attended the Film and Television Academy in Berlin (1966–1970). His first film productions were for German television, and it was during his work on the popular German Tatort (Crime Scene) TV series that he first met and worked with the actor Jürgen Prochnow — who would later appear as the U-boat captain in Petersen's famous Das Boot.