Burghart Klaußner, born September 13, 1949, in Berlin, attended actor's training at Berlin's Max Reinhardt seminar from 1970 to 1972. He then performed at Berlin's Schaubühne and Schillertheater, as well as at theatres in Köln, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, or Hamburg, and worked with directors such as Lietzau, Stein, Palitzsch, Minks, or Düggelin. In 1983, Klaußner made his movie debut in "Ziemlich weit weg". He then appeared regularly on TV, for instance as minister-president in "Einmal Macht und zurück - Engholms Fall" (1993), or as Dr. Heimeran, head of the criminal investigation department, in "Adelheid und ihre Mörder" (1993 to 2001). Klaußner was also seen regularly on the big screen, for instance as a father in "Kinderspiele" (Child's Play", 1992), as Tabatier in "Rossini" (1997), as Robert Stadlober's father in "Crazy" (2000), as Daniel Brühl's father, who had fled the GDR, in "Good Bye, Lenin!" (2003), or as a kidnapped entrepreneur in "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" ("The Edukators", 2004), a role that won Klaußner a German film award in 2005.

Since then, Klaußner starred in several striking supporting parts on the big screen, for instance, as a near bankrupt business man in Christian Petzold's award-winning film "Yella" and as a head physician in the hospital satire "Die Aufschneider". For his role as the father in Hans-Christian Schmid's "Requiem" he was nominated German film award in 2006. Klaußner also played leading roles in the relationship drama "Der Novembermann" alongside Götz George and in Dito Tsintsadze's "Der Mann von der Botschaft" ("The Man from the Embassy") that features Klaußner once more as a person of authority and bureaucrat whose well-arranged life is turned upside down by several unexpected events. For this role Klaußner was awarded the "Golden Leopard" in Locarno.

Furthermore, Klaußner has toured Germany with his swing band and a program of chansons by Charles Trenet.

In 2009, Klaußner was seen in two fairly different, yet equally distinctive leading roles on the movie screen: In the tragicomedy "Alter und Schönheit" ("Age and Beauty", 2009), he played a member of a clique of old buddies who accompany a friend on his deathbed, while in Michael Haneke's award-winning social parable "Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindheitsgeschichte" ("The White Ribbon"), Klaußner is seen as the pastor of a German village who is confronted with mysterious, occult-seeming incidents on the brink of the outbreak of World War I. Also in 2009, Klaußner again collaborated with director Dito Tsintsadze: The crime drama "Mediator" ("Murder in the Theatre"), starring Klaußner in the leading role, depicts a murder case from the perspectives of different persons. Furthermore, in 2010, the film "Goethe!" is going to open in cinemas. In the film, Klaußner plays the father of a young woman who start a love affair with the legendary poet and womanizer from Frankfurt.

In 2011 he played a school principal in the period football film "Der ganz große Traum". He then portrayed legendary hotel owner Lorenz Adlon in the acclaimed two-part TV production "Das Adlon. Eine Familiensaga ". February 2013 saw the release of "Invasion", again directed by Dito Tsintsadze, in which Klaußner plays a widower who is besieged in his own home  by alleged relatives of his late wife.

After parts in "Nachtzug nach Lissabon" (2013) and "George" (2013, TV), Klaußner appeared in "Zwischen Welten" and "Diplomatie", both of which premiered at the 2014 Berlin IFF. In Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Elser" (2014/2015), Klaußner played infamous Nazi and head of police Arthur Nebe, who interrogated German resistance fighter Georg Elser. His performance garnered Klaußner a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 2015 German Film Awards. He next got rave reviews for his portrayal of general attorney Fritz Bauer in Lars Kraume's "Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer" (2015). This part earned him several awards: the Günter Rohrbach Filmpreis, the Preis der deutschen Filmkritik (Prize of German Film Cirtics), the Bayerischer Filmpreis (Bavarian Film Prize) and the Friedenspreis des deutschen Films - Die Brücke (Peace Prize of German Film). He was also nominated for the European Film Prize and the German Film Prize. Klaußner then played an East-German bureaucrat in Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" (2015). 

In the six-part political thriller "Die Stadt und die Macht" (2016) he portrayed the long-standing Lord Mayor of Berlin. Again with Lars Kraume as director he was in the interactive TV drama "Terror - Ihr Urteil" ("The Verdict") playing the presiding judge. Klaußner also had supporting roles in the psychodrama "Freddy/Eddy" (2016) and as a Swiss doctor and companion in the drama "Die letzte Reise" (2016) with Christiane Hörbiger. In Lars Kraumes GDR drama "Das schweigende Klassenzimmer" ("The Silent Revolution", 2018) Klaußner was an SED minister of education, for Heinrich Breloer he starred in the title role of the biopic "Brecht" (2019). Also in 2019, he was part of the ensemble of the improvised TV comedy "Klassentreffen".

After the Covid pandemic, Klaußner was seen in a leading role in the TV crime thriller "Kommissarin Lucas - Goldrausch" (2022) and as a grandfather in the feature film "Oskars Kleid" (2022). In the Munich "Tatort" episode "Hackl" (2023), Klaußner played the title role of a previously convicted troublemaker, and in the feature film "Die Unschärferelation der Liebe" (2023), the leading role of an overcorrect butcher who falls in love with a slightly chaotic woman.