A classically trained ballet dancer, Dobrygin had his breakout role as the first Russian superhero in the 2009 film Black Lightning.

His father was a Soviet Navy submarine captain and his mother was a professional ballet dancer from Moscow,[1] a combination Dobrygin has called a "super-Soviet ideal" match.

It is not clear whether he was expelled or left it by his own choice, but next year he enrolled in Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) to study Directing.

[7] While still a student, Dobrygin was cast as Dima Maykov in producer Timur Bekmambetov's Black Lightning (2009), the first Russian-language blockbuster superhero film.

Dobrygin portrayed Issa Karpov, a half-Russian, half-Chechen Muslim who flees to Hamburg, where he is targeted as a terrorist by the CIA and German secret service.

"[1] He is also starring in another John le Carré adaption, Our Kind of Traitor (2015), alongside Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård, and in Grain from Turkish director Semih Kaplanoğlu.

[12] In 2015, Dobrygin starred in an adidas commercial directed by Pharrell Williams, #OriginalSuperstar, along with Pusha T, Japanese designer Yoon, VJ/designer VJ Mian, and Mexican illustrator Smithe.

Now it’s been 10 years, so it’s going to be a documentary experiment for me: I’m going to go deep into ballet, prepare my body and then travel the world with a professional coach, an international choreographer and a camera.”[1] In March 2015, he told Interview magazine, "I really want to go back on the big stage and dance something.

[7] He declined to appear in a love scene with Rachel McAdams in A Most Wanted Man that was not in the original script, but he stated that it was because it would have been extremely out of character for the role he was playing.

[19] Dobrygin said his parents are extremely devout and do not watch television or films, although he brought his father, a former submarine captain, to the Moscow premiere of Black Sea.