Age, Biography and Wiki
- Birth Date: September 5, 1942
- Age (as of 2025): 82 years old
- Birthplace: Munich, Germany
Werner Herzog is a self-taught filmmaker who has created over 70 films spanning documentaries and feature films, earning a reputation as a leading figure of New German Cinema. He is known for his distinctive voice, which often narrates his documentaries. Herzog’s works often feature ambitious or eccentric protagonists and are characterized by surreal and exotic qualities, with a focus on psychological extremes.
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 5 September 1942 |
| Age | 82 Years |
| Birth Place | Munich, German Reich |
| Horoscope | Virgo |
| Country |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: Approximately 6 feet (183 cm)
- Weight: Not publicly available
- Measurements: Not disclosed
While Herzog’s exact body measurements have not been officially published, he is often described as having a tall and imposing presence.
| Height | 183 cm |
| Weight | |
| Body Measurements | |
| Eye Color | |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Werner Herzog keeps much of his personal life private. He has been married multiple times and has children, but specific details about his current dating life and relationship status are not widely publicized.
His mother was Austrian with Croatian ancestry, while his father was German. When he was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang in the Chiemgau Alps, after the house next to theirs was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in World War II. He, his older brother Till and younger half-brother Lucki grew up without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone. He recounted that his family had "no toys" and "no tools" and said that there was a sense of anarchy, as all the fathers of the village's children were absent. He never saw films, and did not even know cinema existed until a traveling projectionist came by the one-room schoolhouse in Sachrang.
When Herzog was 12, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth, but he later adopted his father's surname (which is German for "duke") as he thought it sounded more impressive for a filmmaker. Herzog made his first phone call when he was seventeen; two years later, he started work on his first film, Herakles. Herzog says that when he eventually met his father again, "fairly late in life", his mother had to translate Werner's German into the Bavarian language which his father spoke so the two could communicate. Herzog, aged thirteen, was told by a bullying music teacher to sing in front of his class at school in an effort, Herzog said, "to break my back." When he adamantly refused he was almost expelled. The incident scarred him for life. For several years Herzog listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments, but when he turned eighteen he immersed himself in music with particular intensity.
During Herzog's last years of high school, no production company was willing to take on his projects, so he worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to earn the funds for his first featurettes. When he finished school, but before he formally graduated, he followed his girlfriend to Manchester, England, where he spent several months and learned to speak English. He found the language classes pointless and "fled". After graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the post-independence Congo, but in attempting to travel there, reached only the south of Sudan before falling seriously ill. While already making films, he had a brief stint at the University of Munich, where he studied history and literature. Herzog subsequently moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in order to study at Duquesne University.
Werner Herzog moved to Los Angeles with his wife in the late 1990s. He said of the city, "Wherever you look is an immense depth, a tumult that resonates with me. New York is more concerned with finance than anything else. It doesn't create culture, only consumes it; most of what you find in New York comes from elsewhere. Things actually get done in Los Angeles. Look beyond the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and a wild excitement of intense dreams opens up; it has more horizons than any other place. There is a great deal of industry in the city and a real working class; I also appreciate the vibrant presence of the Mexicans."
Herzog has been married three times and has three children. In 1967, he married Martje Grohmann and they had a son named Rudolph Amos Achmed (born 1973). They divorced in 1985. He later began dating Austrian-German actress Eva Mattes, and they had a daughter named Hanna Mattes (born 1980) before splitting up. He married Christine Maria Ebenberger in 1987, and they had a son named Simon (born 1989). They divorced in 1997. Herzog moved to Los Angeles in 1996 and married Russian-American photographer Elena Pisetski in 1999.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Martje Grohmann (m. 1967-1985) Christine Maria Ebenberger (m. 1987-1997) Lena Pisetski (m. 1999) |
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Net Worth and Salary
- Net Worth (2025): Estimated between $8–12 million
- Salary: Not publicly disclosed
Herzog’s wealth primarily comes from his extensive career in filmmaking—directing, producing, and writing—as well as occasional acting roles in popular films and TV shows such as The Mandalorian and Jack Reacher. His net worth reflects his long-standing influence and numerous awards in the industry.
Career, Business and Investments
- Career Highlights:
- Directing Debut: Herakles (1962, short film)
- Breakthrough: Signs of Life (1968), which won him the Silver Bear at Berlinale
- International Recognition: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) won the Grand Prix at Cannes
- Collaboration with Klaus Kinski: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and more
- Awards: Over 50 awards and nominations, including Best Director at Cannes for Fitzcarraldo
- Business and Investments: Primarily invested in film production and his own projects
- Acting Roles: Notable appearances include The Mandalorian, Jack Reacher, and Penguins of Madagascar
Social Network
- Official Website: Not listed
- Social Media: Werner Herzog is not known to be active on major social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter. He maintains a low public profile online.
In 1971, while Herzog was location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God in Peru, he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 508. Herzog's reservation was cancelled due to a last-minute change in itinerary. The plane was later struck by lightning and disintegrated, but one survivor, Juliane Koepcke, lived after a free fall. Long haunted by the event, nearly 30 years later he made a documentary film, Wings of Hope (1998), which explored the story of the sole survivor.
In 2015, Herzog shot a feature film, Salt and Fire, in Bolivia, starring Veronica Ferres, Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal. It is described as a "highly explosive drama inspired by a short story by Tom Bissell".
He appeared in person opposite Tom Cruise as the villain Zec Chelovek in the 2012 action film Jack Reacher. Herzog gained attention in 2013 when he released a 35-minute Public Service Announcement-style documentary, From One Second to the Next, demonstrating the danger of texting while driving and financed by AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile as part of their It Can Wait driver safety campaign. The film, which documents four stories in which texting and driving led to tragedy or death, initially received more than 1.7 million YouTube views and was subsequently distributed to over 40,000 high schools. In July 2013, Herzog contributed to an art installation entitled "Hearsay of the Soul", for the Whitney Biennial, which was later acquired as a permanent exhibit by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In late 2013 he voiced some of the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises.
In June 2022, Herzog published his debut novel, titled The Twilight World, telling the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who had refused to surrender for decades while hiding in the jungle of a Philippine island. Herzog had met Onoda in Tokyo more than two decades before, and the two had discussed the jungle. Herzog had used jungles as settings of many of his important works. Onoda, a WWII Japanese soldier who was deployed in 1944 to Lubang, a small Philippine Island, where he conducted warfare for twenty-nine years. After receiving orders to "hold his position", his commander promised that someone would return for him, but as the years went by, it was clear that he was forgotten.
Education
- Formal Education: Did not attend film school
- Film Education: Self-taught, learned by studying films and storytelling independently
- Early Influences: French New Wave and New German Cinema movements
At an early age, he experienced a dramatic phase in which he converted to Catholicism, which lasted only a few years. He started to embark on long journeys, some on foot. Around this time, he knew he would be a filmmaker and learned the basics from a few pages in an encyclopedia which provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 35 mm camera he stole from the Munich Film School. In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he says, "I don't consider it theft. It was just a necessity. I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with".
Dissatisfied with the way film schools are run, in 2009 Herzog founded his own Rogue Film School. For the students, Herzog has said, "I prefer people who have worked as bouncers in a sex club, or have been wardens in the lunatic asylum. You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Costa Ricans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia." Notable alumni include Keirda Bahruth, Nir Sa'ar, Bob Baldori, Sean Gill, Frederick Kroetsch, and George Hickenlooper.
Critical of film schools, Herzog has taught three cinema workshops. From 2009 to 2016, he organized the Rogue Film School, in which young directors spent a few days with him in evocative locations. What exactly goes on at the rogue film school has been clouded in secrecy, but director and writer Kristoffer Hegnsvad report from his stay there in his book Werner Herzog – Ecstatic Truth and Other Useless Conquests: "The first thing you notice is his enormous presence. His self-confidence sends shockwaves through a room every time he opens his mouth or make eye contact; he adopts a stance of exalted calm, as though he has achieved some kind of mastery – not just over his own mind, but over the capriciousness of the world" ". Lessons ranged from "How does music function in film?" to "The creation of your own shooting permits".
In 2018, he held "Filming in Peru with Werner Herzog", a twelve-day workshop in the Amazonian rainforest, close to the locations for Fitzcarraldo, for new filmmakers from around the world. Each made a short film under Herzog's supervision. Herzog was enthusiastic, and said of the resulting films that "the best 10 of them are better than the selections for best short film at the Academy Awards". Workshop participants included directors Rupert Clague and Quentin Lazzarotto. Herzog is also on the website MasterClass, where he presents a course on filmmaking, entitled "Werner Herzog teaches filmmaking". In a discussion with Errol Morris at the Toronto Film Festival, Morris, who was influenced by Herzog's early films, joked that he considered himself one of the first students of the Rogue Film School. Regarding Herzog's influence on him, Morris quoted Gabriel García Márquez's reaction to reading Kafka for the first time: "I didn't know you were allowed to do that."
Herzog is a voracious reader. As required reading for the Rogue Film School, he has listed J. A. Baker's The Peregrine, Virgil's Georgics, and Ernest Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Suggested reading includes the Poetic Edda as translated from Old Norse by Lee M. Hollander, Bernal Díaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain), and the 888-page report published by the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.
