Jürgen Prochnow is a German actor. His most well-known roles internationally have been as the sympathetic submarine captain in Das Boot (1981), Duke Leto Atreides I in Dune (1984), the minor, but important role of Kazakh dictator General Ivan Radek in Air Force One and the antagonist Maxwell Dent in Beverly Hills Cop II.
Prochnow was born in Berlin and brought up in Düsseldorf, the son of an engineer. He has an elder brother, Dieter. He studied acting at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. Thanks to his on-screen intensity and his fluency in English, he has become one of the most successful German actors in Hollywood. He portrayed Arnold Schwarzenegger in a film about the actor’s political career in California, entitled See Arnold Run; coincidentally, Prochnow was one of the actors considered for the title role in The Terminator. He also appears as the main antagonist in the Broken Lizard film Beerfest, which contains a submarine scene that references his role in Das Boot. He also played a supporting character in the Wing Commander film, Cmdr. Paul Gerald. In addition, he dubbed Sylvester Stallone’s voice in the German version of Rocky and Rocky II.
He was facially scarred following a stunt accident during the filming of Dune. One scene called for Prochnow (as Duke Leto) to be strapped to a black stretcher and drugged. During one take, a high-powered bulb positioned above Prochnow exploded due to heat, raining down molten glass. Remarkably, the actor was able to free himself from the stretcher, moments before glass fused itself to the place he had been strapped. During the filming of the dream sequence, he had a special apparatus attached to his face so that green smoke (simulating poison gas) would emerge from his cheek when the Baron (Kenneth McMillan) scratched it. Although thoroughly tested, the smoke gave Prochnow first and second-degree burns on his cheek. This sequence appears on film in the released version.
In 1996, he was a member of the jury at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival.
Prochnow was married in the 1970s, and had a daughter Johanna, who died in 1987. He married Isabel Goslar in 1982, with whom he has two children: a daughter Mona, and son Roman. They divorced in 1997. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Munich. He was involved with Birgit Stein, a German screenwriter and actress. He received American citizenship in 2003.
Jürgen Prochnow Biography / Wiki
| Name | Jürgen Prochnow |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Berlin, Germany |
| Date of Birth | June 10, 1941 |
| Age(as in 2023 Feb) | 81 |
| Deathday |
Jürgen Prochnow Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Das Boot | Captain Lieutenant ‘Der Alte’ | 1981-09-17 | A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while … |
| The Consequence | Martin Kurath | 1977-12-02 | Thomas is the son of a prison warden. He falls for and seduces Martin, who is older and one of the prison inmates. After Martin is released, they try … |
| Kill Cruise | The Skipper | 1990-04-05 | Two British beauties go to Barbados with a yacht captain who does not know what he’s in for…. |
| Heart of America | Harold Lewis | 2002-09-05 | Starring Jurgen Prochnow (‘The Replacement Killers’ ‘Air Force One’ and Patrick Muldoon ‘Stigmata’ ‘Starship Troopers’), ‘Heart of America’ is a power… |
| Human Bomb | Gerhardt Dach | 1998-05-26 | An unhappy male takes a classroom of children and their teacher (Patsy Kensit) hostage with a set of explosives strapped to his body…. |
| Last Run | Andrus Bukarin | 2001-07-01 | Frank Banner used to specialize in helping Soviet spies defect safely to the West. Banner’s wife was shot to death aiding such an escape. Now, with th… |
| Killing Cars | Ralph Korda | 1986-02-13 | In a complex story of automotive intrigue, oil barons, corporate finance, and international villainy, the inventor of an environmentally friendly car … |
| The Cry Of Love | Holger | 1997-03-05 | The story The Cry of Love is about the love between two men. Lara brings her first boyfriend, the good-looking Yannis, to the barbecue party in the fa… |
| See Arnold Run | Arnold Schwarzenegger | 2005-01-30 | This biographical docu-drama alternates between two parallel threads in the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger: his formative early years as the repeat win… |
| The Cop & the Girl | Der Bulle | 1985-04-18 | A tough cop but his life in ruins. His superiors are only looking for a reason to sack him. The girl is 17 years old and lives on the street. As the c… |
| The Brutalization of Franz Blum | Franz Blum | 1974-03-26 | Born into a well-off family, Franz Blum had led a carefree youth until, some time after graduating from high school, he was arrested by the police. Fo… |
| Trigger Fast | Jack Neumann | 1994-07-06 | A feisty woman struggles to keep her ranch from being stolen by a greedy and unscrupulous land-baron named Malick. A trio of young men comes to her ai… |
| Tödliche Wahl | Alex Bronner | 1995-11-20 | … |
| Der Fall Lucona | Jorunalist Strasser | 1993-06-10 | … |
| The Millennium Disaster – Computer Crash 2000 | Hans Hagemann | 1999-12-28 | A convicted murderer holds the world hostage with a year 2000 virus in all the world’s major computer systems…. |
| Auf Befehl erschossen | Franz Sass | 1972-12-01 | … |
| Fesseln | Günther | 1995-11-28 | … |
| Guns of Honor | Jack Neumann | 1994-10-27 | In 1867, an ex-Confederate general, Jackson Hardin, still holds a grudge against the Union. He and his legendary “Floating Outfit” refuse to let the r… |
| The Man Inside | Günter Wallraff | 1990-10-26 | Gunter Wallraff is a journalist seeking to expose the unethical journalism practiced by The Standard, a very popular and powerful German newspaper. He… |
| Rilke Projekt: Zwischen Tag Und Traum (Live 2005) | Jürgen Prochnow | 2005-04-18 | … |
| The Final Journey | Eduard | 2017-09-21 | A former German Army officer, accompanied by his granddaughter, journeys to the Ukraine to find the woman he once loved…. |
| Kotte | Günther Kotte | 1979-02-12 | … |
| From China with Love | Paul Konen | 1998-10-09 | … |
| Knast | Roloff | 1972-11-22 | … |
| Interference | Herr Dryser | 2016-02-16 | … |
| Unternehmer | Arnold | 1970-12-29 | … |
| The Schoolmaster | Rozinsky | 1990-08-10 | In 1948 a new schoolmaster with a Polish background arrives in a small South-African town and is confronted with the Apartheid regime…. |
| A Handful of Water | Konrad | 2020-10-24 | Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot, Dune) stars as Konrad, an old man still mourning his wife’s death, living alone in a large house with little but a tropica… |
| Der Alte und die Nervensäge | Wilhelm Schürmann | 2020-12-11 | … |
| Hans in Luck | Hans Schmidtke | 1976-10-05 | When Hans wakes up one morning, he realizes that he is longer than his bed, his feet sticking out over the edge of the bed. The young man remembers hi… |
| The Other Side of the Law | Simon McQuarie | 1994-12-24 | With two shots from a rifle, the life of a man and his young son are forever changed. Jurgen Prochnow stars in this chilling tale of a man who is forc… |
| The Fourth War | Col. Valachev | 1990-03-08 | Cold War drama about two gung-ho border commanders (Roy Scheider, Jurgen Prochnow) who carry out their own private war against each other on the Germa… |
| DNA | Dr. Carl Wessinger | 1996-03-07 | A mad scientist’s DNA experiment on the bones of a mysterious jungle creature brings the carnivorous beast to life, and only his former assistant Ash … |
| Hurricane Smith | Charlie Dowd | 1992-01-31 | An oil-field worker from Texas journeys to Australia to look for his missing sister, and his search winds up getting him involved with a violent drug-… |
| Poison | Carl Krieger | 2000-04-04 | Traci is a devious teenage girl who befriends and kills anyone who comes between her and her mother, Dana, a failed movie actress who lies for and pro… |
| Amigo – Dead on Arrival | Fredo Kovacs | 2010-10-02 | … |
| Shirin’s Wedding | Aida | 1976-01-20 | In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small… |
| Zoff | Joky | 1972-01-21 | … |
| Baltic Storm | Erik Westermark | 2003-09-01 | A journalist from Berlin, Germany, and a Swedish lawyer discover the truth behind the sinking of the “MS Estonia” in 1994, where more than 850 people … |
| Davon stirbt man nicht | Everett Burns | 2002-10-31 | … |
| Murder: By Reason of Insanity | Adam Berwid | 1985-10-01 | A married couple from Poland emigrates to the U.S.,. but things don’t turn out as well as they had imaged. The husband’s business fails, while his wif… |
| Heaven’s Fire | Quentin Darby | 1999-08-07 | Terrorists seize a building with intent to blow it up. However, one of the men trapped in the building is an ex-treasury agent, who just happens to be… |
| Krieg und Frieden | Kevin | 1982-09-30 | The third episodical film, after Deutschland im Herbst and Der Kandidat, in which notable German film makers reflect on the state of their country…. |
| The Dark Side of the Moon | Pius Ott | 2016-01-14 | A psychedelic mushroom trip turns a successful lawyer into a wanted man…. |
| Die Kinder meiner Tochter | Ernst Blessing | 2013-05-04 | … |
| The Guardian Angel | Albert Klosser | In July 1944, with the Allies landed at Normandy but unable to push past German forces, a young German soldier is enlisted for a spy mission by a myst… | |
| Forbidden | Fritz Friedländer | 1985-03-24 | In Berlin in the early 1940s, romance is forbidden between the young countess who is studying veterinary medicine and a young man she meets at the hom… |
| The Last Border | Duke | 1993-08-20 | One man’s quest for revenge in a post-apocalyptic world… |
| The Last Rifleman | … | ||
| Das Boot: Behind The Scenes | Self | 1981-09-20 | Comprehensive classic piece that looks at the process of creating the movie, told with a strong, well-constructed narrative that plays almost as a mov… |
| In the Mouth of Madness | Sutter Cane | 1995-02-03 | An insurance investigator begins discovering that the impact a horror writer’s books have on his fans is more than inspirational…. |
| The Seventh Sign | David Bannon | 1988-04-01 | Abby is a pregnant woman with a curious new boarder in the apartment over her garage. Turns out he’s heaven-sent and is speeding along the Apocalypse … |
| La conjura de El Escorial | Espinosa | 2008-09-05 | 16th century ruler King Philip II of Spain maneuvers within a court of deceit and betrayal… |
| Robin Hood | Sir Miles Folcanet | 1991-05-13 | The Swashbuckling legend of Robin Hood unfolds in the 12th century when the mighty Normans ruled England with an iron fist…. |
| Ohne einander | Ernest | 2007-03-19 | … |
| The Keep | Captain Klaus Woermann | 1983-12-16 | Nazis take over an ancient fortress that contains a mysterious entity that wreaks havoc and death upon them…. |
| Interceptor | Phillips | 1992-10-13 | A U.S. Air Force officer tries to stop a murderous group of terrorists who are trying to steal two top secret F-117A Stealth Fighters from the cargo h… |
| Operation Ganymed | Oss | 1977-12-11 | A spaceship returns to Earth after several years of space exploration and finds it desolate. Landing in what they believe is Mexico, the crew decides … |
| The Poet | Vashon | 2003-11-20 | A contract killer sees a chance to free himself from a tragic past…. |
| The Last Stop | Fritz | 2000-05-16 | A group of snowbound strangers discover there are killers amongst them…. |
| Terminus | Sir / Doctor / Yellow Truck’s Driver | 1987-01-28 | An established dystopian sport has drivers of a computerized truck driving cross-country to a terminus. The lead truck, created by a boy genius, is dr… |
| The Elite | Avi | 2001-02-28 | After the murder of their families by a terrorist bomb, five young adults are trained as a hi-tech, anti-terrorist team with a mission to search and d… |
| One or the Other of Us | Bernd Ziegenhals | 1974-04-22 | Psychological thriller that focuses on the intense conflict between a university professor and a blackmailer…. |
| Gunblast Vodka | Sacha Roublev | 2001-08-08 | Supermodel Everhart is kidnapped by bad guy Prochnow and rescued by good guy Otto in technopop action…. |
| Oko ve zdi | 2009-12-03 | … | |
| Love is Forever | General Siegfried Kaplan | 1983-04-03 | Michael Landon stars in this real life story about a journalist in Laos, and the extent to which he will go for his girlfriend…. |
| Remember | Rudy Kurlander #4 | 2015-10-23 | With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the d… |
| Devil’s Paradise | Escher | 1987-05-07 | At the start of the 20th century, a man lives in solitude on an island. One day on the mainland, he saves a young woman from some nasty folk and takes… |
| So weit das Auge reicht | Alexander Späh | 1980-08-08 | … |
| The Fall | József Kovács | 1999-02-01 | In Budapest, two Americans live together. Adam, a former Manhattan prosecutor at work on his first novel, and Lisa, a cool hard-working financier who … |
| Real Men | Himself – Actor | 2019-07-18 | An investigation into the myth of the screen hero and its importance to men, mainly in the Western world. How the professional image is built in Holly… |
| Esther | Haman | 1999-03-29 | Esther, the beautiful queen of Persia, intervenes to save the Jewish people from a bloody massacre…. |
| Primeval | Jacob Krieg | 2007-01-12 | A news team is sent to Burundi to capture and bring home a legendary 25-foot crocodile. Their difficult task turns potentially deadly when a warlord t… |
| The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum | Ludwig Götten | 1975-01-10 | After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action…. |
| A Dry White Season | Captain Stolz | 1989-09-20 | During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher’s life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy w… |
| On Dangerous Ground | Carl Morgan | 1996-05-13 | Vusi Madlazi returns to the South African village he left as a young boy (he was organizing against apartheid, and left in fear of his life) to bury h… |
| Company of Heroes | Luca Gruenewald | 2013-02-25 | American soldiers lost behind enemy lines during the WWII make a horrific discovery: Hitler has a super bomb in development. Against all odds, they se… |
| Dark Asylum | Dr. Fallon | 2001-11-08 | Asylum is a taut psychological thriller about a deranged fearsome killer running lose in an abandoned high security Asylum. Pitting the county psychia… |
| Damascus Cover | Franz Ludin | 2017-10-23 | A spy navigates the precarious terrain of love and survival during an undercover mission in Syria…. |
| Kundschafter des Friedens | Kern | 2017-01-26 | Four very retired, ex-GDR spies, or “Kundschafter des Friedens” as they were officially named, led by the once legendary Jochen Falk, are called on by… |
| Final Ascent | Paul | 2000-11-05 | A man leading an expedition into the Rocky Mountains becomes entangled with a deadly band of thieves in search of their lost loot…. |
| Body of Evidence | Dr. Alan Paley | 1993-01-15 | When an elderly millionaire is found dead with cocaine in his system, his will leaves $8 million to Rebecca Carlson, who was having an affair with him… |
| The Replacement Killers | Michael Kogan | 1998-02-06 | Hired assassin John Lee is asked by Chinatown crime boss Terence Wei to murder the young son of policeman Stan Zedkov. Lee has the boy in his sights, … |
| Judge Dredd | Judge Griffin | 1995-06-30 | In a dystopian future, Dredd, the most famous judge (a cop with instant field judiciary powers) is convicted for a crime he did not commit while his m… |
| Merlin and the War of the Dragons | The Mage | 2008-11-25 | In 5th Century Britian, a young Merlin struggles for his place in his known land under the tutelage of The Mage, a local wizard whom sees the young ma… |
| Die Schuld der Erben | Kurt Hanson | 2012-01-05 | … |
| Julie, chevalier de Maupin | Le baron Hengen | 2005-01-10 | Agnès Dormes, a famous opera singer, saves Julie, a baby girl who was about to be sacrificed during a black mass. Twenty years later, the baby has tu… |
| Der blonde Affe | Jan Vleuten | 1999-04-04 | … |
| Ein schmaler Grat | Uwe Wolfmann | 2013-01-22 | Psychothriller by facts. A lightly labile journalist (Felicitas Woll) wants to explore the motives of a women murderer (Heiner Lauterbach). When he wa… |
| Wing Commander | Cdr. Paul Gerald | 1999-03-11 | The Hollywood version of the popular video game series “Wing Commander”. Unlike other video games to feature film transitions, series creator Chris Ro… |
| Stallone’s Law: The Making of ‘Judge Dredd’ | Himself | 1995-06-30 | Documentary on the making of the 1995 film ‘Judge Dredd.’… |
| Spear of Destiny | Baron Von Haan | 2010-04-01 | When a museum professor disappears, his colleagues must solve riddles and avoid traps to find the mythical Spear of Destiny and rescue the professor…. |
| Alisea and the Dream Prince | Kurdok | 1996-02-01 | Alisea and her brothers have been captured by Azaret, an evil wizard. Alisea escapes the castle and meets the young Prince Demian, with whom she falls… |
| The Da Vinci Code | André Vernet | 2006-05-17 | A murder in Paris’ Louvre Museum and cryptic clues in some of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings lead to the discovery of a religious myste… |
| Schröders wunderbare Welt | John Gregory | 2006-11-17 | … |
| Beerfest | Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen | 2006-08-25 | During a trip to Germany to scatter their grandfather’s ashes, German-American brothers Todd and Jan discover Beerfest, the secret Olympics of downing… |
| Lie Down with Lions | Marteau | 1994-06-12 | Doctor Peter Husak introduces the American Jack Carver to his friend, nurse Kate, and it’s love on first sight. But when she learns, in a dramatic inc… |
| Dengler – Die schützende Hand | Dr. Schweikert | 2017-11-07 | … |
| Chain Reaction | Police Man | 2006-01-01 | A prison bus with over a dozen criminals on board has an accident and rams another car, in which Dr. Douglas Madsen was on his way home. Most of the p… |
| Sinners and Saints | Mr. Rhykin | 2010-06-30 | In lawless storm ravaged New Orleans, eleaguered Detective Sean Riley is trying to cope with the death of his young son and the abandonment of his wif… |
| Beverly Hills Cop II | Maxwell Dent | 1987-05-18 | Axel heads for the land of sunshine and palm trees to find out who shot police Captain Andrew Bogomil. Thanks to a couple of old friends, Axel’s inves… |
| The English Patient | Major Muller | 1996-11-05 | In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along … |
| House of the Dead | Kirk | 2003-04-11 | Set on an island off the coast, a techno rave party attracts a diverse group of college coeds and a Coast Guard officer. Soon, they discover that thei… |
| Ripper: Letter from Hell | Detective Kelso | 2001-08-08 | A massacre survivor studies serial killers under a famous expert, but her classmates soon start dying at the hands of a Jack the Ripper copycat…. |
| Jack the Dog | Klaus (as Juergen Prochnow) | 2001-01-22 | Jack is a womanizer, but settles down with Faith. When the marriage falls apart due to Jack’s desire for women, he gets shared custody of his son. Liv… |
| Air Force One | General Ivan Radek | 1997-07-25 | Russian terrorists conspire to hijack the aircraft with the president and his family on board. The commander in chief finds himself facing an impossib… |
| The Celestine Prophecy | Jensen | 2006-06-01 | A spiritual adventure film chronicling the discovery of ancient scrolls in the rainforests of Peru. The prophecy and its nine key insights predict a w… |
| Hitman: Agent 47 | Tobias | 2015-08-20 | An assassin teams up with a woman to help her find her father and uncover the mysteries of her ancestry…. |
| Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me | Woodsman | 1992-06-03 | In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The… |
| The Merchant of Four Seasons | Man at the Meeting Table | 1972-02-10 | Hans is a street fruit peddler and born-loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After r… |
| Ohne Gnade | Helmutchen | 2013-05-02 | … |
| Dune | Duke Leto Atreides | 1984-12-14 | In the year 10,191, the world is at war for control of the desert planet Arrakis—the only place where the space-travel substance Melange ‘Spice’ can… |
| Das Boot Revisited: An Underwater Success Story | Self – Das Boot Actor | 2021-01-10 | In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II…. |
| Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces | Woodsman | 2014-07-16 | A feature-length compilation of deleted and extended scenes from the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me…. |
| Tenderness of the Wolves | Hehler | 1973-07-12 | A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, a… |
| Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s “Island of Dr. Moreau†| Self (archive footage) | 2014-08-24 | The story of the insane scandals related to the remake of “Island of Dr. Moreau†—originally a novel by H. G. Wells—, which was brought to the… |
| A Hidden Life | Major Schlegel | 2019-12-11 | Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II…. |
Credit: TMDB
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