Thanks to his on-screen intensity and his fluency in English, he has become one of the most successful German actors in Hollywood. His most well-known roles internationally have been as submarine Captain Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock in Das Boot (1981) and the villain Maxwell Dent in Beverly Hills Cop II.

More recently, he played Arnold Schwarzenegger in a film about the Austrian actor's political career in California, entitled See Arnold Run. The film was directed by James B. Rogers, and also stars Mariel Hemingway as Maria Shriver.