Axel Milberg, born August 1, 1956, in Kiel as the son of a female doctor and an attorney, graduated from drama school at the end of the 1970s at Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich where he subsequently worked as a cast member at Kammerspiele, and played characters such as Don Juan and Nathan the Wise under directors like Dieter Dorn, Peter Zadek, and Alexander Lang. Milberg already made his movie debut in 1981 in "Neonstadt" but focused on his theatre career during the 1980s. He did not start to appear in numerous smaller movie and TV roles before the beginning of the 1990s, for instance in TV series like "Derrick" and "Wolffs Revier".

Milberg made his breakthrough on the movie screen in 1995 with Hans-Christian Schmid"s "Nach fünf im Urwald" ("It"s A Jungle Out There") as a middle-class father and jazz fan that rediscovers his youth after his daughter (Franka Potente) has run away from home. In Sherry Horman"s "Irren ist männlich" ("Doubting Thomas", 1996), Milberg played a neurotic, and in Nico Hofmann"s TV remake of "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" (1996) he played the psychopathic murderer Schrott.

Again and again, Milberg portrayed violent and/or neurotic characters, for instance in Roland Suso Richter"s prison drama "14 Tage lebenslänglich" ("14 Days to Life"). He also delivered a strong performance as an opportunist in "Der Campus" ("Campus", 1998). Milberg"s appearance always oscillating between the inconspicuous and the inscrutable has been convincing in unfathomable as well as in good-natured or mildly eccentric parts.

Milberg"s most important TV roles include "Seitensprung in den Tod" ("Comforting Certainty of Death", 1997), the Uwe Johnson adaptation "Jahrestage" (2000), his portray of Veit Harlan in Horst Königstein"s film "Jud Süß – Ein Film als Verbrechen? " (2001), and his role as Friedrich Fromm in Jo Baier"s film "Stauffenberg" (2004). In 2001, Axel Milberg played the part of inspector Klaus Borowski in "Stahlnetz – PSI"; since 2003, he successfully plays the same character in the Kiel branch of the "Tatort" crime series. In 2007, Milberg also played the title role in the successful TV series "Dr. Martin".

One more example in a long series of roles of driven characters is the role of the manager who is always pressed for time in Detlef Bothe"s film "Neben der Spur" ("Tour Exzess", 2007).

Besides his theatre career and his film career, Axel Milberg is also well-known as the voice of the German audio books of the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell.