Yevgeny Semyonovich Matveyev (Russian: Евгений Семёнович Матвеев, Ukrainian: Євген Семенович Матвеев; 8 March 1922 – 1 June 2003) was an acclaimed Soviet and Russian actor and film director who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1974. He is best known as Nagulnov in Podniataya Tselina based on Mikhail Sholokhov's novel and Nekhludov in Resurrection (Russian: Вскресение) based on Leo Tolstoy's novel.

Yevgeny Matveyev was born in the village of Novoukrainka in the Nikolayev Governorate of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kherson Oblast, Ukraine) to father Semyon Kalinovich Matveyev, a Red Army serviceman was stationed in the region at the end of the Russian Civil War, and mother Nadezhda Fyodorovna Kovalenko, a local peasant woman. Semyon Matveyev left his wife shortly after Yevgeny was born.

Yevgeny Matveyev attended school in the nearby town of Tsyurupinsk, where he saw his first play and left school after the ninth grade to pursue a career in acting.

He made his first step on the professional stage at the Kherson Theater in 1939. One of his first small stage roles was a part of a musician in Bestalanna. The great Russian actor Nikolay Cherkasov noticed the young talent and advised Matveyev to proceed acting carrier and move to Kiev in order to study with Alexander Dovzhenko. Yevgeny Matveyev studied with Dovzhenko at the acting school of the Kiev Film Studio in 1940-1941.