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Oskar Werner (November 13, 1922 – October 23, 1984) was an Austrian actor. Born Oskar Josef Bschließmayer in Vienna, he started off his career as a stage actor for the famous Burgtheater until making his film debut in Der Engel mit der Posaune in 1948.

Universally regarded as one of Western Europe's foremost stage actors, Oskar Werner was 18 years old when he made his stage bow at the Burgtheater in his native Vienna. A lifelong pacifist, Werner did everything he could to avoid conscription in the Axis army during World War II; when he finally was forced into a uniform, he deserted at the earliest opportunity.

After the war, Werner resumed his theatrical career, only reluctantly making his first film in 1948; "I am married to the theatre, and the films are only my mistress" he would later declare. In 1951, he made his English-language film debut as "Happy," an enigmatic German prisoner of war, in 20th Century-Fox's Decision Before Dawn. When Fox reneged on its promise to develop Werner into a Hollywood star, he went back to his true love, the theatre, vowing to only appear in films that intrigued him. In 1955, he essayed the title role in Mozart, and also played a smaller but no less significant part as the student with the scarf in Max Ophüls' Lola Montes. Then it was back to the stage, culminating with his formation of Theatre Ensemble Oskar Werner in 1959. One of Werner's most notable screen performances was the romantic intellectual Jules in François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), and he became an international star as a result — although it was his portrayal of the philosophical Dr. Schumann in Ship of Fools (1965) that earned the actor his only Oscar nomination, and a Golden Globe nomination as well. As a supporting actor, Werner received a Golden Globe award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and a nomination for Voyage of the Damned (1976).

In the 1970s and 1980s, Werner returned to the stage — among other things, starring in and directing "Hamlet" with his Theater Ensemble at the Salzburg Festival. During the 1970s he also spent much time travelling internationally. In an uncharacteristic television appearance, Werner played the murderer opposite Peter Falk in a made-for-TV-movie off-shoot of the Columbo television series entitled Columbo: Playback (1975), prior to his Golden Globe nominated final film appearance in Voyage of the Damned (1976). His alcoholism apparently having resulted in the decline of his acting career, Werner died of a heart attack in 1984, at the age of 62, just before he was scheduled to deliver a lecture at a German drama club.

• Decision Before Dawn (1951)
• Der Lezte Akt (The Last Ten Days of Adolf Hitler) (1955)
• Mozart (1955)
• Lola Montès (1955)
• Jules et Jim (1962)
• Ship of Fools (1965)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• Interlude (1968)
• The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
• Voyage of the Damned (1976)

• Oskar Werner Online (Fansite)
• Oskar Werner at the Internet Movie Database
• Photo gallery