Born August 5, 1968 in Irkutsk (Siberia). He is the son of Yuri Tsapnik (1945-2004), a star actor of the Chelyabinsk State Academic Theatre Naum Orlov, and the sportswoman Valentina Tsapnik (athletics).
In his youth, he studied the violin. He acquired the profession of cook at the Combine School of Production and then he attended the Sverdlovsk Theatre Institute (Ekaterinburg), still in Siberia, for two years.
