Fyodor Mikhailovich Nikitin was born in Lokhvitsa, Lokhvitsky Uyezd, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1956). People's Artist of the RSFSR (1969). Born into a noble family. His father was a general in the tsarist army. He studied at the Page Corps. And suddenly decided to become an actor. From 1916 he was an actor in the theaters of Odessa and Kherson. In cinema since 1918 (his first role was a messenger in the film "Thérèse Raquin"). He graduated from the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre (1922). In 1922-1928 he was an actor in the theaters of Moscow, Yaroslavl and Leningrad. In 1928-1931 he was a teacher at the State Institute of Cinematography.

In 1931-1936 he was an actor at the Lenfilm studio, then at the Leningrad New Theater for Young Spectators. He was a participant in the Great Patriotic War. In 1941-1943 he was a commander of a machine-gun platoon of the People's Militia, an actor and director of the agitation platoon of the Leningrad Front. From 1943 he was an actor and director of the Leningrad Blockade Theater (later the Leningrad Drama Theater named after Komissarzhevskaya). From 1948 he was an actor at the Lenfilm studio. In the mid-1980s, the film "And Life, and Tears, and Love" was released, in which Nikitin played the leading role, which brought the actor a prize at the All-Union Film Festival.