Mišel Matičević was born in West-Berlin in 1970. Between 1994 and 1998, he studied acting at the HFF Konrad Wolf in Potsdam-Babelsberg. During that time, he already appeared in stage productions at the Deutsche Theater, Berlin and the Kleist-Theater, Frankfurt/Oder.

In 1996, he made his screen debut in "Müde Weggefährten", which compiles five episodes about refugees from the civil war in Yugoslavia and received the Max-Ophüls-Award. He got his first leading role in Dito Tsintsadze's "Lost Killers" (2000), and won the Actor Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for his performance as a luckless hitman. In the following years, he primarily worked in television and displayed a wide range: He appeared in successful TV series like "Tatort", "Alarm für Cobra 11" and "Kommissar Rex", popular entertainment fare like "Die Eltern der Braut" (2003) and acclaimed dramas like "Hotte im Paradies" (2003) and "Kalter Frühling" (2004), both directed by Dominik Graf.

In 2006, he played a Hungarian poet and revolutionary in the international co-production "The Company", a thriller about the history of the CIA. The same year, he starred in Graf's crime drama "Eine Stadt wird erpresst". Again teaming up with Graf, he played poet Clemens Brentano in the 2007 production "Das Gelübde". This role, along with his performances in "Todesautomatik" and "Die dunkle Seite", won him the Best Actor Award at the Deutsche Fernsehpreis in 2008.

Matičević returend to the big screen with a supporting role in Caroline Link's "Im Winter ein Jahr", and appearances in "Effi Briest" and "Hangtime – Kein leichtes Spiel". After Dominik Graf cast him as the lead for his spectacular TV series "Im Angesicht des Verbrechens", he starred in Thomas Arslan's thriller "Im Schatten". His sixth collaboration with Graf, the drama "Dreileben – Komm mir nicht nach", aired in 2011.

In 2012, he starred in the fourth and final season of the Austrian police procedural "Schnell ermittlelt". The same year, "My Beautiful Country - Die Brücke am Ibar" premiered at the Munich Film Festival: In the film, which was released theatrically n December 2013, Matičević plays an Albanian who falls in love with a Serbian woman during the Kosovo war of 1999. After portraying a petty criminal in Lars Becker's "Die Geisterfahrer" (2012, TV), he played a man who unknowingly falls in love with his own sister in Rainer Kaufmann's TV comedy "In den besten Familien" (2012). Kaufmann also directed him in the sequel "Beste Bescherung", which aired in 2013.

For his role in the crime thriller "Lösegeld", in which he played a detective on the hunt for a child kidnapper, he received a nomination for the German Television Award in 2012.  

Matičević also received much critical praise for his impersonation of a corrupt Special Deployment Commando official in the big screen thriller "Wir waren Könige" ("The Kings Surrender", 2014, directed by Philipp Leinemann). He played an important role as an investigator alongside Nadja Uhl in Sherry Hormann's "Operation Zucker - Jagdgesellschaft" (TV, 2016), about the involvement of the highest circles in child trafficking and sexual abuse. 

Once again with Leinemann as director, Matičević played a leading role as a journalist in the satirical comedy "Willkommen bei den Honeckers" (TV, 2017), based on the true story of a tabloid reporter (played by Maximilian Meyer-Bretschneider), who as an alleged young communist gained the trust of the Honeckers in 1993 and published a home story about their life in Chilean exile. In Züli Aladağ's two-parter "Brüder" (2017) he was a constitutionalist chasing a German Salafist, in the successful series "Babylon Berlin" (2017-2020) he impersonated a Berlin underworld figure.  

Matičević was a regular cast member as a pimp in the TV series "Die Protokollantin" (2018) and as clan leader in "Dogs of Berlin" (2018). He also took on a leading role as a desperate hostage-taker in the Lucerne "Tatort" episode "Friss oder stirb" (2018) and played a smaller role in the big screen thriller "Man from Beirut" (2019).

The psychodrama "Exil" ("Exile", BE/DE/XK 2020), about a Kosovo-born pharmaceutical engineer who feels increasingly bullied and marginalized in his company, received much attention. After its premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 2020, the film was released in German cinemas in August of the same year. For his performance in this film, he received the Günter Rohrbach Film Award and a nomination for the German Film Critics' Award.   

In the Boris Becker biopic "Der Rebell – Von Leimen nach Wimbledon" (2021, TV), Matičević played Becker's manager Ion Tiriac. He also starred in several mini-series: as an ambitious farmer in the six-part historical series "Oktoberfest 1900" (2020), as a hacker in the four-part series "The Billion Dollar Code" (2021) and as a police officer in the six-part series "Lauchhammer - Tod in der Lausitz" (2022). He also played Berlin underworld figure Edgar "The Armenian" Kasabian in the fourth season of "Babylon Berlin" (2022).   

Mišel Matičević's next feature film, like "Exil" before it, premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale: "Verbrannte Erde" ("Scorched Earth" 2024, directed by Thomas Arslan), a sequel to the gangster film "Im Schatten", in which he reprised the lead role of the professional criminal Trojan in Berlin.