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", Prochnow made his name in the international film scene.

Following "Das Boot", 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.

At the same time, Prochnow was increasingly involved in German productions. He played an American investor in Michael Schorr's satire "Schröders wunderbare Welt" ("Schroeder's Wonderful World", 2006), he featured in Florian Baxmeyer's "Tatort" episode "Schlafende Hunde" (2010) and in Lars Becker's "Nachtschicht" episode "Das tote Mädchen". In 2011, he stood in front of the camera in a film directed by his wife Birgit Stein: Together with Gedeon Burkhard, Helge Schneider and Ralf Richter he was part of the ensemble of the comedy "Ohne Gnade" ("No Mercy") which opened in theaters in the spring of 2013. He received positive reviews for his work in the made-for-TV film "Die Kinder meiner Tochter" (2013) where he portrayed a conservative judge who – out of the blue – has to take care of two kids who were brought up as Muslims and are allegedly his grandchildren. In the video game movie "Hitman: Agent 47" (US/DE 2015) he played a supervillain, in Atom Egoyan's "Remember" (CA/DE 2015) an aged Nazi criminal who, after decades, is tracked down by a relative of murdered Jews.

In the thriller "Die dunkle Seite des Mondes" ("The Dark Side of the Moon", release date: January 2016) he featured alongside Moritz Bleibtreu and Nora von Waldstätten in a pivotal role as an unscrupulous businessman who schemes against his mentally instable partner.

After a guest-starring turn as a ruthless police detective in the Tatort entry "Borowski und das verlorene Mädchen" (2016), he played a secret agent in Robert Thalheim's comedy "Kundschafter des Friedens" ("Old Agent Men", 2016). Prochnow next was cast as the lead in "Leanders letzte Reise" ("The Final Journey", 2017), in which a 92-year-old war veteran travels to Ukraine to look for a lost love. In 2017, Jürgen Prochnow also starred in international productions again, including the British spy thriller "Damascus Undercover", the Norwegian WWII drama "The Guardian Angel" and the Terrence Malick-directed "A Hidden Life" (premiere: Cannes 2019).