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Jesper Christensen was born in Copenhagen on May 16 1948. Starting out at a young age as a worker in Greenland, he later attended university in Copenhagen while supporting himself with jobs as a ticket vendor and cleaner. During his time as a college student, he already moonlighted as a stage actor and starred in productions of plays like "Faust" and "Le Misanthrope".
In the mid-1970s, he made the leap to film and television. Aside from appearing in numerous Danish TV productions, he also played a supporting role in Eberhard Fechner's miniseries "Tadellöser & Wolff", which he reprised four years later for "Ein Kapitel für sich".
In 1978, he won the prestigious Bodil Award for his performance "Hør, var der ikke en som lo?", and he went on to garner more accolades with his roles in "Sofie" (1992) and "Barbara" (1997). After twenty-five years, Christensen bid farewell to the stage in 1999 in order to focus solely on his movie career.
His lead performance in "Bænken" ("Die Bank", 2000), the first film in director Per Fly's trilogy, won him both the Robert and the Bodil Award in Denmark. After a supporting role in the second part "Arven" (2003), his turn in " Drabet" (2005), the third and final part of the trilogy, again won him a Bodil Award.
From 2000 on, Christensen frequently had memorable roles in prolific international productions like "The Interpreter" (2005), in which he acted alongside Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, and "James Bond 007: Casino Royale" that saw him playing one of the adversaries of Daniel Craig's secret agent.
In recent years, Christensen was also regularly cast in German co-productions including "Tage des Zorns", "Die ewigen Momente der Maria Larsson", "Sturm" and "This is Love". In 2011, he had a memorable turn as a butler opposite Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars von Trier's acclaimed "Melancholia".
After a supporting role in "Schwestern", he starred in Wolfgang Becker's adaptation of the bestselling novel "Ich und Kaminski", which was released in 2015.
Jesper Christensen is married to stage director Tove Bornhøft, with whom he has two daughters.