Yan Tsapnik is a Russian theater and film actor. Yan Tsapnik was born in Irkutsk, into the family of a leading actor of the Chelyabinsk State Academic Drama Theater named after Naum Orlov, Yuri Tsapnik (1945-2014). His mother, Valentina Nikolaevna, was an athlete (track and field). He studied violin playing. At the training and production combine he obtained the profession of a cook. He completed two years at the Sverdlovsk Theater Institute. He did compulsory military service in a reconnaissance and airborne company of a separate reconnaissance battalion of the GSVG; after service he did not return to the Sverdlovsk Theater Institute and transferred to the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography (LGITMiK).

A graduate of LGITMiK (course of V.V. Petrov). From 1992 to 2005 he was an actor at the Tovstonogov Academic Bolshoi Drama Theater. In 2001 he hosted the entertainment and sports TV game "Count N's Treasure" on the TVC channel.