The son of a project engineer and a technical draftswoman, Uwe Preuss grew up in East Germany and Brazil. He tried a multitude of careers, with continual fresh starts: industrial management in the planned economy, boilerman for a church guest house, canteen manager for construction workers, warehouse manager at a steel works, crate builder at a steam sawmill, and accountant, before leaving for West Berlin. There he studied acting. From 1991 he joined the Dresden theatre company and the Berliner Ensemble. Since 2005 he has been freelance, performing on major German stages. For the last ten years he has mainly worked in front of a film camera.
