Taube graduated in 1954 from the Cherry Lawn School in Darien, Connecticut. While he was a student at the school, Folkways Records invited him to record an album of Swedish folk songs.

Taube released his first album in 1954; it included a cover of one of his father’s songs. He has since released many albums which include songs written by his father. Several of his most well-known versions of Evert Taube songs come from albums recorded in the 1970s, but he recorded more of them at later stages, including his 2007 album Alderville Road. Referring to that album, reviewer Peter Dahlgren said, “Evert had the yarns and Sven-Bertil had the voice.”

Taube has been married four times, and has four children, born in 1960, 1965, 1979, and 1994. He belongs to an untitled branch of the Baltic German noble Taube family, introduced at the Swedish House of Nobility in 1668 as noble family No. 734.

He has recorded songs from both Fredman’s Epistles and Fredman’s Songs by the popular Swedish 18th-century songwriter Carl Michael Bellman, Paul Britten Austin wrote in his 1967 biography of Bellman that Sven-Bertil Taube’s two Bellman albums (released in 1960 and 1963) “have sold more copies than any other disc, popular or classical, ever released in Sweden”. Göran Forsling wrote that Taube helped to start “a new era in Bellman interpretation around 1960”, like Fred Åkerström giving the songs “a hitherto unheard earthbound realism”.

Taube also started an acting career that took him to London, where he performed in theater and musicals, notably as Prince Albert in I and Albert. He won a role on the television series Upstairs, Downstairs. In the 1970s, Taube tried to find work as a film actor, and had some minor roles, most notably in the 1976 World War II drama The Eagle Has Landed and a starring role as a US agent in the 1971 film version of Alistair MacLean’s novel Puppet on a Chain.

Taube starred in the Swedish film version of Stieg Larsson’s novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in the role of Henrick Vanger. The film was released in early 2010. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Guldbagge Award for his role in the film.