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Valerie Pachner was born in 1987 in Wels (Austria). In 2004 Pachner won the YOUKI Award for Best Acting Performance in the short film "Drawed Up". Already during her acting studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar from 2009 to 2013 she read at the Werkstatttage at the Burgtheater, acted in "räuber.schuldengenital" at the Residenztheater as well as in various short films and in Thomas Woschitz' feature film "Bad Luck". In 2013 she completed her acting training at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. In the same year she became a member of the ensemble of the Residenztheater Munich, where she stayed until 2017. In 2014 Pachner made an appearance in "Jack", a feature film by Austrian director Elisabeth Scharang.
In 2015, Pachner played Stefan Zweig's stepdaughter in Maria Schrader's "Vor der Morgenröte - Stefan Zweig in Amerika" ("Stefan Zweig – Farewell to Europe"). In the same year Dieter Berner cast her for the role of Egon Schiele's muse and partner, Wally Neuzil, in "Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen" (AT/LU). For her performance Pachner won the Romy Young Talent Award and the Austrian Film Award 2017 as Best Female Actress.
In 2016 she was awarded the Förderpreis der Freunde des Bayerischen Staatsschauspiels and the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis für Darstellende Kunst. In the same year, Valerie Pachner appeared in front of the camera for the biographical drama "A Hidden Life" (US/DE) by cult director Terrence Malick, as the wife of the Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, who refused military service in the Wehrmacht in 1943 on grounds of conscience. The film did not premiere until 2019 at the Cannes International Film Festival.
She played the leading role in Marie Kreutzer's "Der Boden unter den Füßen" ("The Ground Beneath My Feet"), which premiered at the Berlinale in February 2019 and was released in German cinemas in May. For her portrayal of a successful management consultant whose life is thrown off course by her schizophrenic sister, she received awards at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and the Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Schwerin. Also in spring 2019, Pachner made an appearance in Edward Berger's sensitive drama "All My Loving".
Lars Kraume cast her in his six-part series "Die neue Zeit" (2019) as Gunta Stölzl, a weaver and textile designer who played a key role in shaping the Bauhaus style. The Austrian coming-of-age drama "Another Coin for the Merry-Go-Round" (2021) presented her as a party-loving teenager in Vienna's underground scene. In Nicole Weegmann's two-part TV biopic "Alice" (2022), centered on the prominent German feminist Alice Schwarzer, Pachner portrayed the actress Romy Schneider.
She also appeared in several British-American productions: the spy film "The King's Man: The Beginning" (2021) cast her as the legendary agent Mata Hari; the fantasy adventure "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore" (2022) featured her as the German witch Henrietta Fischer; and the miniseries "The English" (2022) saw her as a German-born settler in the American Wild West.
A widely noted return to the stage came with Pachner's appearance at the Salzburger Festspiele in 2023 — one of the world's most prestigious summer festivals for opera, music, and theater. There she appeared in "Jedermann," the festival's iconic open-air production performed almost every year since 1920. Pachner not only played the Buhlschaft (the lover) but also Death, marking the first time in the festival's history that both roles were embodied by a single performer.
On the big screen, she took on leading roles in the horror film "Delicious" (2025) and in the award-winning drama about coping with grief "Vier minus drei" ("Four Minus Three", DE/AT 2025).