Jürgen Prochnow, born June 10, 1941, in Berlin, worked at a bank after finishing secondary school and became an extra at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. From 1963 to 1969, Prochnow attended actor"s training at Essen"s Folkwang school. In 1966, he became a cast member at the theatre in Osnabrück, then performed at theatres in Aachen and Heidelberg and was employed at Schauspielhaus Bochum until 1976. Since 1976, Prochnow is a freelance actor. His performance of Franz Moor in Peter Löscher"s production of Friedrich Schiller"s "Die Räuber" (The Robbers) in 1979 won him the award of best actor of Theater heute magazine. In the same year, Prochnow attended actor"s training at Lee Strasberg"s in Los Angeles. From 1970 on, Prochnow also worked for TV productions. He became known to a wider audience with some of Wolfgang Petersen"s TV movies.

Prochnow also played the blackmailing student Ziegenhals in Petersen"s movie debut "Einer von uns beiden" (One or the Other). He played the name part of the sensitive convict who fights his way to the top in Reinhard Hauff’s "Die Verrohung des Franz Blum" (The Brutalisation of Franz Blum) and the wanted deserter Götten in Volker Schlöndorff"s and Margarethe von Trotta"s "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum). Prochnow became one of the most distinctive actors of Neuer Deutscher Film. He mainly played characters who seem to be cautious loners but who are highly emotional and always on the brink of dropping out of their role. He was the disciplined and demanding Kaleu Lehmann-Willenbrock in Petersen"s "Das Boot" (The Boat) who despite his soldierly rigour is still a father figure to his men. With his performance in "Das Boot" (The Boat), Prochnow made his name in the international film scene.

Following "Das Boot" (The Boat), Prochnow starred in several American and European productions which were mainly futuristic and fantasy films. He played the lordly intergalactic knight Leto Atreides in David Lynch"s "Dune" (1984) but was mainly cast for diabolic characters, for example as summoner of the apocalypse in "The Seventh Sign" or as an obsessed writer in John Carpenter"s "In The Mouth of Madness" (1993). Apart from stereotypical villains Prochnow also played a police officer in Peter Keglevic"s "Der Bulle und das Mädchen" (The Cop and the Girl, 1985) or an investigator in "Der Fall Lucona (The Lucona Affair, 1993).

In 1995, Prochnow played alongside Sylvester Stallone in the filmic version of the "Judge Dredd" comic. One year later he was a major in the melodrama "The English Patient which won a total of nine Academy Awards. In 1998, Prochnow played another villain in "The Replacement Killers". After appearing in Uwe Boll"s adaptation of the video game "House of the Dead" in 2003, Prochnow portrayed Arnold Schwarzenegger in the biographical TV movie "See Arnold Run" in 2005.