UPDATED: A plane believed to belong to “Titanic” composer James Horner has crashed in Santa Barbara. The pilot was killed, authorities confirmed.
It’s currently unclear if the 61-year-old composer was on the plane. There were no survivors.
Santa Barbara County Fire responded to a call of a plane crash in a community north of Santa Barbara called Ventucopa, near Route 33 at the border between Ventura and Kern counties, at about 9:30 a.m. on Monday. The crash started a one-acre brushfire.
The cause of the crash is being investigated. Horner’s reps at the Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency were unavailable for comment early Monday evening.
Horner’s lawyer, Jay Cooper, told Variety that the plane is in fact Horner’s, and that he has not heard from him since the crash.
“James was a very experienced pilot,” he said. “James loved flying. I don’t know anything more than that.”
Horner won two Oscars for his work on James Cameron’s 1997 mega-hit “Titanic,” one for best original dramatic score and another for best original song for “My Heart Will Go On,” sung by Celine Dion. The “Titanic” soundtrack would go on to become one of the bestselling orchestral film soundtracks of all time.
Popular on Variety
Horner also composed the scores for “Braveheart,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Glory,” “Legends of the Fall” and, working again with Cameron, “Avatar.”
CBS 2 first reported the news.
