Mironov as a child took acting classes, joined an amateur dance group and graduated from music school as an accordion player.

He went on to play leads in Denis Yevstigneyev's Limita and Mama,[citation needed] and to receive a Best Supporting Actor award at the 1995 Sozvezdie International Film Festival for a special appearance in Nikita Mikhalkov's Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun.

Also notable among his early film efforts is the character of Khlestakov in Sergei Gazarov's screen adaptation of Gogol's The Government Inspector.

Mironov's characters include sinister mama's boy in Nikolai Lebedev's Snake Spring, a lovelorn sponger in His Wife's Diary and a naive Soviet cook in Dreaming of Space (both directed by Alexei Uchitel), the deceptively simple intelligence officer in Mikhail Ptashuk's August of 44, the man-turned-bug in Valery Fokin's adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", a war-deranged soldier in Andrei Konchalovsky's House of Fools, an arrogant surgeon in Yegor Konchalovsky's "Escape", a talented loser in Konstantin Khudyakov's "On Upper Maslovka", and a millionaire psycho killer in Andrei Kavun's The Hunt for Piranha.

By the mid-1990s, Mironov also starred in international stage projects as German director Peter Stein's The Oresteia and Hamlet, Declan Donnellan's Boris Godunov, Valery Fokin's The Last Night of the Last Czar and The Karamazovs and Hell (for which he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation).

On 18 December 2006, Mironov became Artistic Director of Moscow's State Theatre of Nations, where he has : Shukshin's Stories by Alvis Hermanis, Figaro.

The Events of One Day by Kirill Serebrennikov, Caligula by Eimuntas Nekrošius, Miss Jilie by Thomas Ostermeier and Hamlet | Collage by Robert Lepage.