Mikhail Ivanovich Pugovkin was born on July 13, 1923 into a poor peasant family in Rameshki Village of the Chukhlomsk District of the Yaroslavl Region. Since childhood he manifested actor’s talent – the boy enjoyed singing and dashingly performing Russian folk dances.

In 1936 the Pugovkins family moved to Moscow. There Mikhail Pugovkin got a job as an electrician apprentice at the Moscow Kaganovich Brake Plant. Along with that he attended a theatrical circle in the Kalyaev Club. At one of the circle performances in 1939 Mikhail Pugovkin was noticed by the stage director Feodor Kaverin, who invited the young actor to the Moscow Drama Theater on Sretenka. Pugovkin worked in that theater for 2 years. Thanks to his work at the theater, the young man got his the first film role: he played in Grigory Roshal's movie Artamonov's Case. In 1941 the actor went to the frontline as a volunteer. However, next year he was invalided out of the army after a severe wound. Subsequently Mikhail Pugovkin was awarded the Patriotic War Order of the 2nd degree.

In 1943 the actor played in the Russian Drama Theater and the same year entered the Moscow Art Theatre School Studio. Afterwards Pugovkin worked at the Northern Navy Theater in Murmansk, at the Vilnius Theater of the Russian Drama and then returned to Moscow and started working in the Lenkom Theater. At that time the actor was into filming again. The movie Soldier Ivan Brovkin (1955) gained him a big success. The movies The Girls (1961), Operation Y (1965), Wedding in Malinovka (1967), 12 Chairs (1971), and Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973) were no less successfu... Pugovkin worked at the Mosfilm Studio and Gorky Film Studio. Altogether the popular actorplayed in around 100 movies. In 1988 he became the People’s Artiste of the USSR.

Mikhail Ivanovich Pugovkin died of diabetes aggravation on July 25, 2008 at his home in Moscow. The merited actor was laid to rest at the Vagankovsky Cemetery.