His father Vladimir Andreyevich was a critic, an author of satirical plays and a director in Demidov's local Drama theatre.

During fights at the Mannerheim Line he served as a wireman and once was ordered to lay 2 km of wire from reels on a backpack in -30 °C weather.

In 1944 he again escaped death by pure luck - a few seconds after he left a trench shelter it was hit by a heavy artillery missile.

In the same year he was by commander's mistake sent to set wire in an occupied village and wasn’t killed by German soldiers only by sheer luck.

[5][3][4] Nikulin first tried himself as a comedian in 1944 when a political officer in his battalion, impressed by his repertoire of jokes, ordered him to organize entertainment for the division, which he did with resounding success.

[3][6] Nikulin's style and precise delivery, as well as his mastery of timing and his hilarious masks made him an outstanding comedian.

[8] In the ring, Nikulin played a phlegmatic, slow and unsmiling person, in the West he was compared to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

[9][10] Nikulin, affectionately called "Uncle Yura" by Russian children, relied mainly upon his wits to earn his place in history as one of the best clowns of the 20th century.

He appeared in almost a dozen major features, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, and achieved great success with short films directed by Leonid Gaidai.

"[14] The first two works with Gaidai, Dog Barbos and the Unusual Cross and later Bootleggers (Russian: Samogonshchiki or The Moonshine Makers, 1961), were also where Nikulin was featured as a character named Fool in The Three Stooges-like trio of Coward, Fool, and Pro, along with Georgy Vitsin as Coward and Yevgeny Morgunov as Pro.

During the rehearsal that day Tatiana witnessed Yuri get run over by a horse, suffer a concussion, a fractured clavicle and almost lose his eye.