Originally intending to pursue a career in journalism, Berenger began acting while attending the University of Missouri and moved to New York City to learn his craft. Working Off-Broadway and in touring companies led to a stint on the ABC daytime soap "One Life to Live". His first significant feature role as Gary Cooper White, the psychopathic killer of "Looking for Mr. Goodbar", came fast on the heels of his feature debut in "The Sentinel" (both 1977), but his first starring vehicle, "In Praise of Older Women" (1978), cast him in the underdeveloped role of a Hungarian stud recalling two decades' worth of conquests. Berenger fared better as the young Butch Cassidy in Richard Lester's "Butch and Sundance: The Early Years" (1979) and as a gentle singing cowboy in "Rustler's Rhapsody" (1985), but it would take the success of "Platoon" to really jump-start his career as a leading man.

Berenger proved forceful and properly unpredictable as the vulnerable macho white supremacist leader in Constantin Costa-Gavras' "Betrayed" (1988) before taking on the role of veteran catcher Jake Taylor in the popular baseball comedy "Major League" (1989), a part he would reprise in "Major League II" (1994). He projected the smoldering charisma of a young Brando as the half-breed Cheyenne mercenary who goes all but naked once he joins the natives in Hector Babenco's "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" (1991), adapted from the 1965 novel by Peter Matthiessen, a richly involving adventure pitting modern man against the fierce and rude clarity of his primeval self. He also appeared in several Hollywood genre films working with a younger generation of leading men: Billy Zane in "Sniper" and William Baldwin in "Sliver" (both 1993).

One of Berenger's best feature performances was as Confederate General James Longstreet in the Turner Pictures presentation of "Gettysburg" (1993), and he reached back to the turn of the century to portray Teddy Roosevelt in the TNT original movie "Rough Riders" (1997), which he also produced. He played a tracker on the trail of prison escapees in "Last of the Dogmen" (1995) and a mercenary-turned-substitute teacher in "The Substitute" (1996). 1998 saw Berenger as Pete Randle in Robert Altman's "The Gingerbread Man" and as the star of "One Man's Hero", the story of a group of Irish immigrants who fled to Mexico and fought for their adopted country as the St Patrick Brigade in the Mexican-American War. He earned an Emmy nomination as the amorous plumber who claims Kirstie Alley's heart in the final two episodes of the long-running NBC comedy series "Cheers" in 1993.