A noted stage actress at the Moscow Art Theater, she has been active in film and television since 1997. She is a recipient of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2001).　　Her father was a theater director and an art director of the Arkhangelsk Regional Youth Theatre. and her mother is a piano teacher at Arkhangelsk Pedagogical College.[1] Her elder sister is also an actress. Panova graduated from the school-studio of Moscow Art Theater in 1999 and joined the same theater.[1] At the theatre she has had some notable roles including Catherine in The Storm, Glagolev in Petticoat Government, The Governess in The Light Shines in the Darkness, Mavka in Forest Song, Kate in The Light Taste of Betrayal and Sonia in Crime and Punishment.　　She debuted in 1997 in the movie Christmas Story and then played a Russian prostitute in Daniel Schmid's Swiss picture Beresina, or the Last Days of Switzerland (1999).[2] In 2002 she starred alongside Inna Gomes and Sergey Gorobchenko Yuriy Moroz's crime film Kamenskaya: Za vse nado platit. She was acclaimed for her roles as Gavina in Aleksandr Mitta's series "Border. Taiga Romance" (2001) and Vicky (Vika) in Aleksei Sidorov's Shadowboxing (2005).[1] In 2010 she starred in Anton Megerdichev's fantasy thriller Dark World alongside Svetlana Ivanova and Ivan Zhidkov.