James Horner, the film composer best known for his Academy Award-winning Titanic score, has reportedly died in a plane crash at the age of 61.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Horner’s death has been confirmed by Sylvia Patrycja who has been identified as his assistant.
“A great tragedy has struck my family today, and I will not be around for a while,” Patrycja wrote on her Facebook. “We have lost an amazing person with a huge heart, and unbelievable talent. He died doing what he loved.”
A plane registered to Horner went down just north of Santa Barbara in Los Padres National Forest killing the pilot, identified to be the composer.
Fairfax is reporting the plane was a single-engine S312 Tucano. It crashed at 9:30am Monday (2:30am Tuesday AEST) and was confirmed by his attorney, Jay Cooper, to be one of Horner’s five aircrafts.
He is known as one of Hollywood’s most prolific composer’s having scored over 100 films. 1997’s Titanic earned him an Oscar for original dramatic score and another one for his contributions to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” which won the original song category.
On top of Titanic, he received Oscar-nominations for his work on Aliens, Avatar, Braveheart, A Beautiful Mind, An American Tail, Apollo 13, Field Of Dreams and House of Sand and Fog.
Horner’s work is set to live-on throughout 2015 with three films due for release that he has worked on – Southpaw, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams; Wolf Totem, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and The 33, a movie based on Chile’s 2010 mining disaster.
A great tragedy has struck my family today, and I will not be around for a while. I would like some privacy and time to...
Posted by Sylvia Patrycja on Monday, 22 June 2015
