Lanovoy came to prominence through playing bold, dashing characters, combining heroic bravado with a sensitivity typical of Russian heroes, a tendency evident in many of his early features, such as Certificate of Maturity (1954) and Pavel Korchagin (1956).

Lanovoy's many film roles from the 1960s include Anatole Kuragin in Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace and Count Vronsky in the screen version of Anna Karenina.

He also played a supporting role of SS General Karl Wolff in the cult spy thriller TV-series Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973).

In 2000s, Lanovoy appeared primarily in the roles of Soviet-era party bosses, such as Yuri Andropov in the 2005 TV film Brezhnev.

However, the World War II Nazi/Romanian occupation caught little Vasily in southern Ukraine with his village relatives while his parents were evacuated to the Soviet rear as workers with a military-critical industrial company.