Hollywood actor Christian Oliver and his two young daughters were killed when the small plane they were in “plummeted into the ocean” off a Caribbean island Thursday, officials said.
The 51-year-old “Speed Racer” star, real name Christian Klepser, was with daughters Madita, 10, and Annik, 12, when they died alongside their pilot, Robert Sachs, on the doomed flight Thursday.
They were being flown from the island of Bequia to nearby St. Lucia when their single-engine plane “experienced difficulties and plummeted into the ocean,” the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police said.
Sachs, who also owned the doomed small plane, radioed the control tower at Bequia to report problems and his plan to return. But that was the last communication before it crashed in the water, local outlet Searchlight reported.
A cellphone video caught the moment the fixed-wing plane fell out of the sky and nosedived into the ocean, before disappearing under the waves.
Fishermen and divers raced to the scene of the air disaster in their boats to try to rescue the victims, before the local Coast Guard responded and recovered four bodies from the wreckage in about 70 feet of water.
All four were pronounced dead on the spot.
The actor — best known for “Speed Racer,” “The Good German,” “Valkyrie” and “Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny” — had posted about his trip before the tragedy.
He shared a photo of a tropical beach dotted with palm trees at sunset just three days before the crash.
“Greetings from somewhere in paradise! To community and love …2024 her [sic] we come!” he wrote in the accompanying caption.
Oliver was born in Celle, Germany, and grew up in Frankfurt. At age 21, he moved to the US to pursue a modeling and acting career.
His IMDB page includes 63 acting credits, including in the 2006 prestige drama “The Good German,” directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchet, and in the 2008 futuristic racing flick “Speed Racer,” with Emil Hirsch in the lead role.
Oliver also found success as a television actor, with roles on “Saved by the Bell The New Class” and the long-running German police drama “Alarm für Cobra 11.”