Born in the town of Vyazma, Smolensk Governorate, Soviet Russia, into a simple working-class family. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1958), People's Artist of the RSFSR (1966), People's Artist of the USSR (1973). Father - Dmitry Filippovich Papanov, mother - Polish woman Elena Boleslavovna Roskovskaya. In the late 1920s the Papanov family moved to Moscow, and Anatoliy entered the first grade. After finishing school in 1939, Papanov took a job as a foundry worker in the repair workshops of the 2nd Moscow Ball Bearing Plant. He took part in amateur artistic activities - in the theater studio of the club of the "Kauchuk" plant. When the war began he went to the front, where he was seriously wounded in the leg on the Southwestern Front. After that he was demobilized and in the autumn of 1942 arrived as a third-group invalid at home, in Moscow, to his parents. He entered the State Institute of Theater Arts named after A.V.

Lunacharsky, in the acting faculty. In 1946, after graduating from the institute, together with his course he went to create a new theater in Klaipeda, where he played his first theatrical role, Sergei Tyulenin, in the production "The Young Guard", staged for the thirtieth anniversary of October. From 1948 - an actor of the Satire Theater in Moscow. In 1987 - he staged a play based on Maxim Gorky's play "The Last Ones". In 1967 he first voiced the Wolf in the famous animated series "Nu, pogodi!" and became an idol of many generations of children. August 3, 1987 - the last frame in the actor's life on the set of the film "Cold Summer of '53" in Karelia. That same evening Papanov left for Moscow. Anatoliy Dmitrievich died in his Moscow apartment of cardiac arrest while taking a cold shower. The actor's funeral took place on August 11 at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow (section No. 10).