Sometimes misspelt "Curt Jurgens" outside German-speaking Europe, he was born in Solln, Bavaria, Germany. He began his working career as a journalist before becoming an actor at the urging of his actress wife, Louise Basler. He spent much of his early acting career on the stage in Vienna.

Critical of the Nazis in his native Germany, in 1944 he was shipped to a concentration camp for "political unreliables." Jürgens survived and after the war became an Austrian citizen. However, like many multilingual German-speaking actors, he went on to play soldiers in innumerable war movies. Notable performances in this vein include a medative officer in the epic The Longest Day. His breakthrough screen role came in Des Teufels General (1955, The Devil's General) and he came to Hollywood following his appearance in the sensational 1956 Roger Vadim directed French film Et Dieu... créa la femme (And God Created Woman) starring Brigitte Bardot. In 1957, Jürgens made his first Hollywood film, The Enemy Below. Jürgens became an international film star. He eventually garnered the role of the villain in Roger Moore's favourite James Bond film in The Spy Who Loved Me as the sociopathic industrialist seeking to transform the world into an ocean paradise.

Although he appeared in over 100 films, Jürgens considered himself primarily a stage actor. He directed a few films with limited success, and also wrote screenplays. Curd Jürgens was married five times; one of his wives was actress Eva Bartok (1927-1998). Showing his sense of humor, he titled his 1975 autobiography Sixty and Not Yet Wise.

Jürgens maintained a home in France but frequently returned to Vienna to perform on stage and that was where he died of a heart attack in 1982. He was interred in the city's Zentralfriedhof. Jürgens had suffered another heart attack several years before. During this he had a terrifying experience where he claimed he died and went to hell.

Curd Jürgens also made a number of films in the French and German languages. Some of his other English language films include: