Member of Vienna's renowned Burgtheater who alternated between stage and screen work from the late 1940s. Werner scored leads in several European productions but, save for his poignant performance in "Decision Before Dawn" (1951), remained better known for his theater work; he was generally considered his country's greatest talent.
Fair-haired and slight, Werner re-emerged in the 1960s in a string of excellent film roles, including Jules in Francois Truffaut's classic "Jules and Jim" (1961), the world-weary counterspy in "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and the ship's physician in "Ship of Fools" (both 1965).