With his "gaunt, ascetic looks",[3] Rasp played numerous scoundrels or shady characters during the Golden Age of German cinema in the 1920s.

Some of Rasp's more notable film roles were "J. J. Peachum" in The Threepenny Opera (1931), as the reckless seducer Meinert in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), as Mr. Brocklehurst in Orphan of Lowood (1926), an early German adaptation of Jane Eyre, and as the bank robber Grundeis in Emil and the Detectives (1931).

Many of the scenes in the latter film in which he appears are part of the Metropolis footage long believed lost until their recovery in 2008.

In one of his last films, Bernhard Sinkel's comedy-drama Lina Braake (1975), Rasp starred against-type as a likable pensioner who steals money from an unscrupulous bank.

Fritz Rasp was awarded with the Filmband in Gold in 1963 for his outstanding work for the German film industry.