Pavel Yuryevich Derevyanko was born in the city of Taganrog, RSFSR, USSR, into a family of factory workers. His parents, Yuri Pavlovich and Tatyana Vasilyevna, worked all their lives at the local Krasny Kotelshchik plant. Pavel has an older brother, Alexander. As a child, Derevyanko was a boy with diverse interests. The future actor engaged in various sports and dancing, yet he had no specific plans or thoughts regarding a career. During his school years, the teenager caused his parents and teachers a great deal of trouble: he had problems both with behavior and with his studies. In the 8th grade, Derevyanko was even going to be held back a second year for poor academic performance, but he decided not to continue his studies at school and dropped out of the educational institution. The next few years of his life were spent searching. Pavel applied both to a medical college and to a culinary one, but he could not prove himself anywhere. Then he attended hairdressing courses and nevertheless decided to obtain a certificate of complete secondary education at an evening school, but he lasted there no more than a month. In his youth, the future artist also engaged in weightlifting and decided to become a bodybuilder, which had a positive effect on his physical condition, but here too the young man did not stay long. After 6 months, he realized that sports training was too boring for him.

Then Derevyanko decided to prove himself as an actor and enrolled in the local theater studio Lestnitsa. He was good at roles in productions, so the young man decided to go to Moscow and enter a capital theater university, but there he was not taken seriously and was not given a chance. Derevyanko's disappointment knew no bounds. In despair, he left the capital and went to Sochi as part of the show ballet Telefon. However, the dream did not leave the young man. Derevyanko decided to return to his hometown, to the Lestnitsa theater studio. A year later he again went to Moscow with the hope of entering a theater university, and fortune smiled on him. The young man was accepted into the acting group of GITIS, into Leonid Kheifets's workshop, even though the applicant had written a dictation extremely poorly. Pavel was enrolled at the university on a contract basis, and Derevyanko studied the 1st-year program as a paying student. Despite the fact that during the first year of study Pavel practically did not pay attention to his classes, he managed to catch up on his studies by the 4th year. Before the final exams, due to physical and nervous strain, the student even fainted twice, and once this happened during a showing of his graduation performance.