Nikolai Eryomenko was an Honored Artist of the RSFSR (25.03.1983). People's Artist of the Russian Federation (1.03.1994). His father was People's Artist of the USSR Nikolai Nikolayevich Eryomenko (1926-2000). His mother was People's Artist of the Byelorussian SSR Galina Alexandrovna Orlova (born 1928). In 1971 he graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (workshop of S.A. Gerasimov and T.F. Makarova) and became an actor at the Theater-Studio of Film Actors. Sergei Gerasimov loved Kolya Eryomenko and cast him in six of his films; only Gerasimov's wife, Tamara Makarova, appeared in more.

From 1976 he was an actor at the M. Gorky Film Studio. From 2001 he was a cultural adviser at the Belarusian embassy in Moscow. In the mid-1990s Eryomenko decided to make his directorial debut with "Son za ottsa" (A Son for a Father), in which he acted alongside his father. After their film together, the elder Eryomenko returned to theater and cinema, where he worked productively for another five years.