Jutta Wachowiak was born in Berlin on December 13, 1940, and grew up in the GDR after the division of Germany. After graduating from school, she first trained as a stenotypist and secretary before following her real career aspiration: to become an actor. She applied to the Babelsberg Film Academy where she studied acting from 1961 to 1963.

Already during this time Wachowiak played small roles in film and television, for example as an acting student in Ralf Kirsten's comedy "Auf der Sonnenseite" (1962), which made Manfred Krug famous, or as the wife of a student representative in Günter Reisch's comedy "Ach, Du Fröhliche...". (1962).  

After graduation Wachowiak got an engagement at the Hans-Otto-Theater Potsdam, where she stayed for five years, but never really felt at home: in an interview in 1981 she described her time in Potsdam in retrospect as "a single defeat". In 1968 she moved on to the Städtisches Theater Karl-Marx-Stadt (today: Chemnitz). There Wachowiak succeeded in "freeing herself" and achieving artistic fulfillment. When she appeared on stage in the role of Luise in Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe", she was discovered together with her stage partner Christian Grashof by the artistic director Wolfgang Heinz: he brought them both into the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 1970. There she made a highly acclaimed debut as Sonja in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" (1972). In the 1970s she was seen at the Deutsches Theater in a variety of highly different roles. She played Charlie in Plenzdorf's "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W." (1972), Cordelia in Shakespeare's "King Lear" (1976) and Polly in Kahlow's "Die Galoschenoper" (1978) - to name but a few outstanding performances.

Parallel to her stage career, Wachowiak regularly appeared in DEFA productions and on GDR television. She received greater attention in the late 1960s as partisan leader Babka in the Arnold Zweig adaptation "Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa" (1967, TV), and as a love-struck widow in the big screen comedy "Seine Hoheit - Genosse Prinz" (1969). Her portrayal of the historical Nazi resistance fighter Libertas Schulze-Boysen in "KLX an PTX - Die Rote Kapelle" ("KLK Calling PTX: The Red Band", 1971) and Grusche in the Brecht adaptation "Der kaukasische Kreidekreis" (1976, TV) consolidated her reputation as a versatile film and television actress.

Her collaboration with director Thomas Langhoff was of particular importance. In 1976 they collaborated on the successful TV movie "Die Forelle", which tells the story of a young mother who has to redesign her life after the unexpected death of her husband. Wachowiak remained Langhoff's preferred leading actress for the next few years: their collaborations include the contemporary story "Befragung - Anna O.". (1977) and "Guten Morgen, Du Schöne" (1979), as well as the idiosyncratic literary adaptations "Stine" (1979, TV), "Muhme Mehle" (1980, freely adapted from Ruth Werner) and "Stella" (1982, after Goethe). Also under Langhoff's direction she played the title role in "Maria Stuart" on stage at the Deutsches Theater in 1980.

Wachowiak had another important collaboration with Roland Gräf. In his socially critical comedy "Bankett für Achilles" (1975), she was the daughter of the title character, in the relationship and milieu study "P.S." (1978) she played a probation officer who starts a love affair with an 18-year-old orphan boy. Critics also praised Herrmann Zschoche's "Glück im Hinterhaus" (1979), based on Günter de Bruyn's novel "Buridans Esel", with Wachowiak as the wife of a man in midlife crisis.

Her leading role in the drama "Die Verlobte" ("The Fiancée", 1980, directed by Günther Rücker and Günter Reisch), based on the autobiographical novel trilogy "Haus der schweren Tore" by Eva Lippold, made Jutta Wachowiak internationally known. In the film she played a communist who gets caught in the wheels of the penal system in the Third Reich. The film received several awards and was praised not least for Wachowiak's multi-layered portrayal.

Once again with Roland Gräf as director, she played the wife of a country teacher in the award-winning literary film adaptation "Märkische Forschungen" (1982), who follows in the footsteps of a forgotten poet and encounters arrogance and self-importance in the scientific apparatus. In Gräf's "Das Haus am Fluss" (1986) she played the leading role of a mother who is haunted by the excesses of war with her daughters.

Ralf Kirsten cast her in the title role of the film biography "Käthe Kollwitz - Bilder eines Lebens" (1987). Wachowiak's last DEFA film was Roland Gräf's "Fallada - letztes Kapitel" ("Fallada - The Last Chapter"), in which she played the writer's wife - for many years this remained her last feature film role. At the Deutsches Theater in the 1980s she appeared in "Yerma" (1984) and "Der blaue Boll" (1985), among others. In 1990 she was awarded the Wolfgang-Heinz-Ring for her theater work.

On television, Jutta Wachowiak appeared only sporadically after the German reunification, for example in Michael Verhoeven's "Schlaraffenland" (1990), a critical examination of the dark sides of reunification. She played the widow of an alleged suicide in the "Tatort" episode "Geschlossene Akten" (1994) and played an important role in Frank Beyer's two-part Hauptmann film adaptation "Nikolaikirche" (1995). Tom Toelle's highly acclaimed Fallada adaptation "Der Trinker" (1995), in which she played the wife of the main character (Harald Juhnke), received a lot of attention. In 2000 Wachowiak appeared in Margarethe von Trotta's four-part family epic "Jahrestage". A few years later, under Trotta's direction, she played her first big screen role since 1988, as a Jewish mother in Nazi Germany in the highly acclaimed drama "Rosenstraße" ("Rosenstrasse", 2003).

Yet Wachowiak's main focus between 1990 and 2004 was the Deutsches Theater Berlin, where she appeared on stage in productions of "Der Biberpelz" (1993, directed by Thomas Langhoff) and "Antigone" (2003). After the 2004/05 season she went on to the Grillo Theater in Essen, where she received much attention in a number of important performances, such as "8 Frauen" (2005), "Tartuffe" (2008) and "Harold und Maude" (2009). She remained in Essen until 2009 and did not appear on TV during that time.

From 2009 she appeared as guest actress at the Deutsches Theater, the Berliner Ensemble and the Schauspiel Bochum. At the same time she began to take on TV roles again. In addition to several appearances in TV series, she played a key role as mother in Tim Trageser's drama "Wohin mit Vater?"(2009) and was the mother of a cynical house husband (Lars Eidinger) in Sylke Enders' relationship drama "Du bist dran" (2013) who dies unexpectedly. In "Nach all den Jahren" (2013) she impersonated the motherly girlfriend of the main character (Simone Thomalla) and in the tragicomedy "Die letzten Millionen" (2014) she belonged to a group of senior citizens who together hit a lottery jackpot.

Wachowiak played a smaller big screen role in 2016 in the coming-of-age music film "Rockabilly Requiem", as the grandmother of a young rockabilly musician. Dominik Graf cast her in the ensemble of the character study "Hanne" (2018, TV), in the "Polizeiruf 110" episode "Mörderische Dorfgemeinschaft" (2019), she was the mother of a murder suspect.

On stage she last appeared at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in "Gespenster" (2017-18) and the solo program "Jutta Wachowiak erzählt Jurassic Park" (2018-20), in which she interweaves the story of a mysterious, strictly secured dinosaur park with her own GDR biography.

Jutta Wachowiak lives in Potsdam and on the island of Usedom.