[3] After finishing high school in Munich in 1991, Verhoeven moved to New York to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
[13] After making a few short films and music videos in the late 1990s, Verhoeven's screenwriting and directing career started in 2001 with the buddy comedy 100 Pro.
Returning to his homeland, Verhoeven landed a huge hit with his aforementioned political comedy Welcome to Germany (2016)[19] that convinced audiences as well as critics world-wide.
[20] The film marks also a special collaboration, since Verhoeven directed his mother for the first time, the international screen and TV actress Senta Berger.
In February 2020, Warner Bros. released his sixth theatrical feature Nightlife starring Elias M'Barek and Frederik Lau, which started as number 1 of the German box office.
The movie, stars Matthias Schweighöfer as music producer Frank Farian, and Tijan Njie and Elan Ben Ali as the infamous dancers / faux-singers Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan.
[30] As his writing and directing idols, Verhoeven names the comedy legends Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch[31] – who both started their careers in Germany before moving to Hollywood.
Before following in his father Michael Verhoeven's filmmaking footsteps – an infamous political auteur of the New German Cinema who caused the shutdown of the Berlinale Competition in 1970[32] –, Simon Verhoeven started out as a screen and TV actor like his mother Senta Berger, who in her 70-year-spanning career starred alongside international screen legends Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Moreau, Alain Delon, Yul Brynner, Charlton Heston, Albert Finney, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, and many more.
Verhoeven landed his first film role while still studying in New York, playing in the 1995 indie comedy Party Girl next to Parker Posey and Liev Schreiber.
Back in Germany, he acted in many made-for-TV romantic comedies, but Verhoeven also took on more substantial roles particularly in films based on true events: In Bruce Beresford's Bride of the Wind (2001) he plays Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, in Sönke Wortmann's The Miracle of Bern (2006) he embodies the 1954 football World Cup winner Ottmar Walter, in The Sinking of the Laconia (2010) he is the 1940s naval officer Harro Schacht, and in the multi-award-winning thriller Mogadischu (2008), he plays the Lufthansa flight 181 pilot Jürgen Vietor in this retelling of the 1977 Palestinian hostage crisis.