Klaus Schwarzkopf was born December 18, 1922, in Neuruppin. During his youth, Schwarzkopf was suffering from severe bone tuberculosis but finally recovered from it. Against his mother"s wish, Schwarzkopf decided to become an actor. He attended acting lessons in Berlin and made his stage debut in 1947 at Staatliches Schauspiel Berlin. During the following years and decades, Schwarzkopf also performed at theatres in Wiesbaden, Hanover, and Munich, where he was awarded as "Bayerischer Staatsschauspieler". His stage repertoire included plays from Shakespeare to Ibsen, from Miller"s "Death of a Salesman" to Zuckmayer"s "Hauptmann von Köpenick".

Until the end of the 1980s, Schwarzkopf regularly returned to perform on stage despite his countless film and TV appeareances. After a series of TV parts at the beginning of the 1960s, Schwarzkopf made his movie debut in 1965 in a supporting role as a physician in "Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius" ("Praetorius"), a comedy by Kurt Hoffmann. Until the mid-1970s, Schwarzkopf regularly appeared in movie productions, including film-historically significant movies such as "Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: Ratlos" ("The Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed", 1968) by Alexander Kluge, Wolfgang Staudte"s crime film "Fluchtweg St. Pauli" ("Hot Traces of St. Pauli", 1971), or Wolfgang Petersen"s movie debut "Einer von uns beiden" ("One or the Other", 1974). Schwarzkopf also won the Filmband in Gold for his performance in the Simmel adatation "Und alle Menschen werden Brüder" (1973).

However, Schwarzkopf has been a popular TV actor throughout his career. Besides countless roles in TV movies such as Bernhard Wicki"s "Die Grünstein Variante" (1984) and in TV series such as "Praxis Bülowbogen" (1987), Schwarzkopf became mainly known for his police characters in crime series such as "Der Kommissar" (1969 to 1974) and the Kiel branch of the "Tatort" crime series, where he portrayed the popular inspector Finke from 1971 to 1978. On June 21, 1991, during the filming of Dieter Wedel"s TV multi-part movie "Der große Bellheim", where he starred in a leading role alongside Mario Adorf, Klaus Schwarzkopf died of pneumonia as a result of an HIV infection.