Lev Konstantinovich Durov was born in Moscow on December 23, 1931. The Durovs belong to the well-known dynasty of the Russian circus actors, and Lev Durov was a grandnephew of Anatoly and Vladimir Durovs.
In his school days Lev Durov attended a a drama studio in the Pioneers' Palace in Moscow. In 1950 he entered the Moscow Art Theatre School Studio, where he studied under Georgy Gerasimov and Sergey Blinnikov.
Upon graduation in 1954 Lev Durov joined the troupe of the Central Children's Theater. This is where he met the film director Anatoly Efros, who played the key role in the actor's creative career for nearly 30 years. The same year Lev Durov debuted in filming and played more than 200 roles since then.
Lev Durov together with Anatoly Efros shifted to the Lenkom Theatre in 1963 and then to the Moscow Drama Theater in Malaya Bronnaya in 1967.
Among Lev Durov's remarkable works there are numerous roles in plays by authors of the 20th century, as well as classical authors: Iago in Othello, Tibald in Romeo and Juliette, Zhevakin in The Marriage (Nikolay Gogol), Nozdrev in The Road (based on The Dead Souls by Nikolay Gogol), Chebutykin in Three Sisters (Anton Chekhov), and Sganarel in Don Juan (Molière).
Lev Durov's characters are neither badies nor goodies: he fuses the tragic and the comic in them. Therefore Lev Durov was often referred to as a tragic clown.
The actor's favourite and most sophisticated role was that of the staff captain Snegirev in the play Brother Alyosha staged by Anatoly Efros after the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: it is the role of a no-one important, who doesn't want to be that way.
Lev Durov, aged 83,  died of a heart failure in a Moscow hospital on the night of August 20, 2015.