[2] He starred in over 60 movies and was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1948, Hero of Socialist Labour in 1972 and awarded four Stalin Prizes (1942, 1946, 1951 and 1952).

[7] Among his notable stage performances were Sobakevich from the 1934 play Dead Souls, Khlynov from An Ardent Heart (1938), Ivan Chebutykin from Three Sisters (1940), Globa from Konstantin Simonov's Russian People (1943), Yepikhodov and Firs from the two different adaptations of The Cherry Orchard (1944 and 1958), Luka from The Lower Depths (1948) and Foma Opiskin from The Village of Stepanchikovo (1970).

He was also the first MAT actor to portray Vladimir Lenin in Nikolai Pogodin's play The Kremlin Chimes for which he received his first Stalin Prize.

His famous performances include mostly character comedy roles such as the bride's father from The Wedding (1944), the horse trainer from Brave People (1950) which gained him another Stalin Prize, a bureaucrat Nekhoda from True Friends (1954), a sea captain from Striped Trip (1961), the father-in-law from Adult Children (1961), an old customs official from The Head of Chukotka (1966) and the head of the photo studio from Zigzag of Success (1968).

His first wife, Elena Vladimirovna Baranovskaya, was 10 years older and had been previously married to a theatre pedagogue Alexei Nikolaevich Baranovsky who taught Gribov at the start of his career.

While still married he started dating Izolda Fyodorovna Apin, a director and administrator at the Moscow Art Theatre, and in 1947 she gave birth to their son Alexey Gribov.