[2] He also had roles in several English-language films, including The Boys from Brazil (1978), Strapless (1989), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), Luther (2003), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), The Reader (2008), Unknown (2011), The Counselor (2013) and Remember (2015).

[4] One of Ganz's most physically demanding stage portrayals was the title character in Peter Stein's 2000 production of Goethe's Faust (Parts I and II); he suffered injuries during rehearsals which delayed his starting in the role.

[11] He also served as a speaker in classical music works, including a 1993 recording of Luigi Nono's Il canto sospeso with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

[1] Despite the support of lead actor Gustav Knuth, Ganz's cinematic debut was not particularly successful and it was only many years later that his career in film got off the ground.

In 1977, he co-starred with Dennis Hopper in Wenders' American Friend, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game,[1] playing a terminally ill father who gets hired as a professional killer.

Ganz appeared in The Reader as a Holocaust survivor and as police officer Horst Herold in The Baader Meinhof Complex, which were both nominated for the 81st Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film respectively).

Among Ganz's later roles were the grandfather in the literary adaptation Heidi (2015), a pseudo-scientific healer in Sally Potter's The Party (2017) and ancient Roman poet Virgil in Lars von Trier's The House that Jack Built (2018).