Johannes Zeiler was born in Vorau, Austria on 29th of April, 1970. He studied German and History at the University of Graz and then moved to Vienna to study Acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar from 1992 through 1996. From 1996 on, he appeared on stage at a number of German and Austrian theaters in Coburg, Kiel, Linz and Vienna to name but a few.

During his years as a theater actor, he only rarely worked for film or TV and it was not until 2007 that he more regularly appeared on screen, usually in smaller roles. He played a police officer in Götz Spielmann's "Revanche" (AT 2018) and received a lot of attention for his portrayal of the main character in Alexander Sokurov's loose adaptation of "Faust" (RU 2011) that won the Golden Lion at the International Film Festival in Venice. Successively, he played a number of title roles in TV productions such as in Leander Haußmann's "Kinderparadies" (2013), an episode of the German "Polizeiruf 110" series, in the family series "Paul Kemp – Alles kein Problem" (2013), in the Austrian crime series "CopStories" as well as in the TV drama "Deckname Holec" ("Code Name 'Holec'", AT/CZ 2016).

He then played a policeman who chases a bank robber in the surreal comedy film "Hotel Rock’n’Roll" (AT 2016), a sequel to Michael Glawogger's "Nacktschnecken" (2004) and "Contact High" (2009). In the children's films "Hilfe, ich hab meine Lehrerin geschrumpft" ("Help, I Shrunk My Teacher", 2015) and "Hilfe, ich hab meine Eltern geschrumpft" ("Help, I Shrunk My Parents", 2018), Zeiler got to show his talent for comic roles. Director Oliver Haffner cast Zeiler in the lead role of his much-acclaimed drama "Wackersdorf" (2018), where he played a district administrator who became a figurehead of the protest movement against the building of a nuclear reprocessing plant in Bavaria. The film opened in German theaters in September 2018.