"I found my escape valve at thirteen or fourteen, in acting. There was a group leader in our church who had studied drama and was putting together an amateur theater group. I immediately realized that this was a place where I could act out my desires and emotions."
Jürgen Prochnow (born June 10, 1941 in Berlin) is a German-American actor.
The role that made him famous both in his birth country and internationally is the stern but fatherly-to-his-men Captain-Lieutenant in the World War II submarine film Das Boot, one of his multiple collaborations with Wolfgang Petersen.
He's had roles in an odd variety of productions in his career since then, from Z/B-grade movies to A-grade Hollywoodian blockbusters and television series (he's not above Money, Dear Boy). He's also kind of pigeonholed into playing villains.
His older brother Dieter Prochnow is also an actor, though only in German language productions.
Selected filmography:
- Tatort (1973-2016) as Dieter Brodschella / Klaus Linder / Hans Rodenburg / Kesting
- The Tenderness of Wolves (1973) as Hehler
- The Brutalisation of Franz Blum (1974) as Franz Blum
- One or the Other of Us (1974) as Bernd Ziegenhals
- The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) as Ludwig Götten
- Das Boot (1981) as the Kapitän-Leutnant
- The Keep (1983) as Capt. Klaus Woermann
- Dune (1984) as Duke Leto Atreides
- Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) as Maxwell Dent
- The Seventh Sign (1988) as David Bannon
- Robin Hood (1991) as Sir Miles Folcanet
- Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces as Woodsman
- In the Mouth of Madness (1995) as Sutter Cane
- Judge Dredd (1995) as Judge Griffin
- The English Patient (1996) as Major Muller
- Air Force One (1997) as General Alexander Radek
- The Replacement Killers (1998) as Michael Kogan
- Wing Commander (1999) as Cdr. Paul Gerald
- Ripper: Letter from Hell (2001) as Detective Kelso
- House of the Dead (2003) as Kirk
- See Arnold Run (2005) as Arnold Schwarzenegger
- The Da Vinci Code (2006) as André Vernet
- Beerfest (2006) as Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen
- A Case for Two (2007) as KHK Max Gerber
- 24 (2010) as Sergei Bazhaev
- NCIS: Los Angeles (2010-2014) as Mattias Draeger
- Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) as Tobias
- Lore (2018 TV series) as Andreas Gruber
- A Hidden Life (2019) as Major Schlegel
- The Last Rifleman (2023) as Friedrich Mueller
