Thomas Heinze was born in Berlin on March 30, 1964 as the son of a US American and a Dutchwoman with German roots. He grew up in the US and in Germany where he moved to in 1973. From 1983 to 1986 he studied acting at Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich. After graduating, he found first engagements at Münchener Kammerspiele and later at the Hamburg Thalia Theater.

He made a couple of appearances in made-for-TV movies and had a supporting role in "Homo Faber" (1991) as the first companion of Julie Delpy's character Sabeth, before his breakthrough came with Sönke Wortmann's comedy "Allein unter Frauen" (1991). Heinze features as a self-righteous macho who is has to move into a shared feminist apartment as the only man. After this box office hit he started to focus his work on more highbrow productions, such as Sherry Hormann's relationship drama "Leise Schatten" ("Silent Shadow", 1991), Robert van Ackeren's love film "Die wahre Geschichte von Männern und Frauen" (1992) where he starred as the sensitive protagonist Wolf, and Hans W. Geißendörfer's Dürrenmatt adaptation "Justiz" ("Justice", DE/CH 1993) that saw him play the lawyer Felix Spat.

Over the next years, Thomas Heinze featured in various films that were partly responsible for a boom in romantic comedies which often struck a nerve with the audience but left critics unimpressed. His roles included a narcissistic TV author in "Frauen sind was Wunderbares" (1994), a greedy yuppie in "Japaner sind die besseren Liebhaber" ("Japanese Are Better Lovers", 1995) and a chauvinist director in Sönke Wortmann's "Das Superweib" ("The Super-Wife", 1996). As a counterpoint to these lowbrow entertainment films, he was cast as a case-hardened criminal in Matthias Glasner's grim gangster drama "Sexy Sadie" (1996). In Markus Imboden's comedy "Frau Rettich, die Czerny und ich" ("Mrs. Rettich, Czerny and Me", 1998) he parodied his own on-screen image by playing an idolized book dealer.

Next to his work for the big screen, Heinze also featured in TV productions such as Sönke Wortmann's "Charleys Tante" (1996) playing the title role and in the romantic comedy "Traumfrau mit Nebenwirkungen" (1999) among others.

After starring in Bernd Eichinger's box office flop "Der große Bagarozy" ("The Great Bagarozy", 1999) as the hypochondriac husband of a sexually frustrated psychologist, Heinze started to work almost exclusively for the small screen in the 2000s. He played a family man in the body swap comedy "Was ist bloß mit meinen Männern los?" (2002) and a reporter in "Das Wunder von Lengede" (2003), a drama about the mine disaster of 1963. His next roles included Giacomo Casanova in Zoltan Spirandelli's comedy "Verführung für Anfänger" (2005) and a charming maker of olive oil in the romantic comedy "Italien im Herzen" (2008). In 2007, he had a returning role as a cleric in eleven episodes of the TV series "Der Fürst und das Mädchen". Since 2008, he features as one of the main characters in the crime series "Marie Brand". In the comedy of errors "Der Blender" (2012) he played alongside Tom Gerhardt as a judge whose brother is a con artist and in Uwe Janson's political satire "Der Minister" (2013) Heinze embodied the editor in chief of a tabloid newspaper.

On the big screen, Heinze made few appearances in small but distinctive roles: He featured as a king in the period epic "Time of the Comet" (D/MK 2007); as a plastic surgeon in "Zweiohrküken" ("Rabbit without Ears 2", 2009); as a police chief in "Die Superbullen" (2011); as the father-in-law of a luckless poet in Oskar Roehler's "Quellen des Lebens" ("Roots Of Life", 2012); and in a self-deprecating part as a humiliated macho called "Latten-Harry" in the comedy "Ohne Gande" ("No Mercy", 2013).

He returned to play a lead in 2014, when he slipped into the role of a real estate agent who keeps his financial problems secret from his future wife in Vanessa Jopp's comedy "Lügen und andere Wahrheiten".