Boll was born in Wermelskirchen and studied at the University of Cologne. In 1994, he published a dissertation (German: “Hochschulschrift”) at the University of Siegen.

Boll has received significant negative publicity regarding this funding method, attributed to a loophole in the German tax laws that was finally closed in 2006.

Boll made headlines by challenging his critics to “put up or shut up”. In June 2006, his production company issued a press release stating that Boll would challenge his five harshest critics each to a 10-round boxing match. Invitations were also open to film directors Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. To qualify, critics had to have written two extremely negative reviews of Boll, in print or on the Web. In 2005, footage from the fights were to be included on the DVD of his upcoming film Postal. On 20 June 2006, Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka stated on Something Awful that he had been invited by Boll to be the first contestant, after Kyanka reviewed Alone in the Dark. The online gambling site GoldenPalace.com decided to sponsor this event, dubbing it “Raging Boll” (a play on the 1980 Martin Scorsese film Raging Bull). A lot was drawn up in late August 2006, featuring Kyanka, Rue Morgue magazine writer Chris Alexander, webmaster of Cinecutre Carlos Palencia Jimenez-Arguello, Ain’t it Cool News writer Jeff Sneider, and Chance Minter, amateur boxer and website critic. Boll fought and won against all five participants. The first match took place on 5 September 2006 in Estepona, Spain, against Carlos Palencia. The others battled on 23 September 2006, at the Plaza of Nations in Vancouver, Canada.

In April 2008, The Guardian ran an article claiming Boll had promised to retire if an online petition at PetitionOnline.com asking him to do so received 1,000,000 signatures. A petition was later started on the site in response, with the 1,000,000 signature goal.

On 7 May 2008, the makers of Stride gum announced they would give each signer a digital coupon for a pack of gum if the petition obtained the required 1 million signatures by 14 May 2008. This deadline ultimately passed without the petition reaching 1 million signatures.

On 27 April 2008, Boll responded to Bay’s “not caring about Boll” comment. “To prove who is the better director”, Boll offered to challenge Bay to a boxing match at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. If Bay accepted, the match would last for 12 rounds and would take place in September. In response to Boll’s offer, Bay again posted a statement, this time saying:

Boll received a rare “Worst Career Achievement” award at the 29th Golden Raspberry Awards on 21 February 2009 for In The Name of the King, 1968 Tunnel Rats, and Postal. Boll has been nominated for Razzies three times in total.

In September 2010, a trailer for Boll’s film, titled Auschwitz, about the concentration camp, was posted on YouTube. The trailer, in which Boll appears as an SS gas chamber guard, contains explicit scenes of the brutalization and killing of concentration camp inmates. Boll has been quoted as saying that films such as Schindler’s List “no longer had the ability to reach young people and that it was his duty as a German to make the film as a way of confronting the past.”

In 2010 Boll was the subject of a documentary film titled Raging Boll, directed by Dan West, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2010.

In September 2010, Darfur won the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival prize for the best international film.

In a later interview with Mike Gencarelli of the Movie Mikes website on 22 March 2010, Boll stated that he would not retire if the petition received one million signatures, commenting:

In March 2012, it was announced he had finished directing a short horror story for the anthology film The Profane Exhibit. The story, inspired by Josef Fritzl, focuses on parents with a daughter locked in a room, where they can partake in immoral acts against her.

In August 2013, Boll announced plans to produce a sequel to Postal based on achieving $500,000 from a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was however cancelled on 5 October 2013.

The petition itself failed to reach one million signatures by the time PetitionOnline shut down on 30 September 2014, peaking at about 353,835 signatures.

Boll currently lives in Vancouver, retaining his German citizenship. He married Canadian film producer Natalia Tudge in 2014. Together, they have 1 son and 1 stepson

On 7 June 2015, Boll released a video on his YouTube account titled “fuck you all”, targeting those who did not fund his last film, then tentatively titled Rampage 3, on Kickstarter as he was unable to secure enough funds. The video quickly became popular and currently has over 1.8 million views.

In 2015, Boll opened the Bauhaus Restaurant in Vancouver, after noting a lack of German cuisine in the city. He hired Stefan Hartmann as executive chef, who earned a Michelin star for his own Hartmanns Restaurant in Berlin. Hartmann resigned from Bauhaus in April 2017, to be replaced by chefs David Mueller and Tim Schulte.

In October 2016, during an interview with the Toronto edition of Metro, Boll announced his retirement from filmmaking, chiefly citing the decline of DVD and Blu-ray sales, noting that he’s had to use his own money to finance his work since 2005.

On 20 October 2016, in an interview with the Toronto, Canada edition of Metro, Boll announced Rampage: President Down was his last film, citing market failures and funding difficulties.

Bauhaus has received overall positive reviews from local and international food critics. The restaurant ranked 37th on the 2016 list of Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants. It is also listed in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Discovery Series in 2017, being one of only three Canadian restaurants to be included.

As of 2017, he still works as a film producer. In February 2018, he revealed in his vlog that he intends to return to film and has sent proposals to Netflix. However, he no longer wants to finance his projects.

In November 2018, Boll was the subject of a second documentary film titled Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul and produced by Prairie Coast Films, which premiered at the 2018 Whistler Film Festival.

In early 2018, Boll and his wife Natalie Boll formed the Bauhaus Group to expand business. The group acquired the Blenheim Pub in Vancouver, changing it from a sports bar to a family-oriented restaurant. The restaurant has since closed. They also announced plans to open a second Bauhaus Restaurant location in Toronto in early 2019. A third location in China is also planned, to be opened in the Ocean Flower Island artificial archipelago and led by two European Michelin-starred chefs.

In October 2020, Boll decided to return to making films and announced Rampage IV: The New Blood and Germany in Winter as his next projects in development.