At the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique de Paris, Nicolas Lormeau followed courses taught by Daniel Mesguich, Denise Bonal and Jean-Pierre Vincent. Upon graduation in 1988, he showed great interest in public youth theatre, as well in spectacles in decentralized, regional theaters across France. In 1990, he staged Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas at the Sartrouville Theatre and then created Karin Serres’s Ferdinande des abysses at Centre dramatique national pour la Jeunesse in Lille.

In 1996, Jean-Pierre Miquel, then Administrator General of the Comédie-Française, invited him to join the Troupe and cast him in Marivaux’s Les Fausses Confidences. He thus became the 526th sociétaire on the 1st of January 2014. His career has been marked by encounters with directors who chose him for both classical and contemporary plays. Daniel Mesguich staged him in Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne; Jean-Pierre Miquel in Berlioz’s Euphonia and Marivaux’s Le Legs; Jean-Louis Benoit in Goldoni’s The Boors (Les Rustres) and Gogol’s The Government Inspector (Le Révizor); Jacques Lassalle in Chekhov's Platonov or Fatherlessness (Platonov ou le fléau de l’absence de pères); Robert Wilson in La Fontaine’s Fables; Denis Podalydès in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac; Omar Porras in Felix Lope de Vega's Pedro et le commandeur; Michel Vinaver in his own play L’Ordinaire; Lilo Baur in Marcel Aymé's La Tête des autres and Gogol’s The Marriage; Marc Paquien in Octave Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les affaires and in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone; Giorgio Barberio Corsetti in Labiche’s An Italian Straw Hat (Un Chapeau de paille d’Italie); Volodia Serre in Ivan Alexandrovitch’s Oblomov; Christian Hecq and Valérie Lesort in their own adaptation of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (20 000 lieues sous les mers); Katharina Talbach in Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (La Résistible Ascension d’Arturo Ui). Often cast in Molière’s comedies, Nicolas Lormeau’s interpretations of Léandre in Les Fourberies de Scapin; of Maître d’armes and Mufti in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; of Thomas Diafoirus in Le Malade imaginaire; as well as Maître Simon or the Commissaire in The Miser (L’Avare) are to be remembered.

In 2001, Nicolas Lormeau staged for the Troupe Alfred de Musset’s L’Âne et le Ruisseau. In 2010, he went back to Musset adapting for the stage, directing and interpreting, La Confession d’un enfant du siècle. He staged Victor Hugo’s Hernani for the 2013 Printemps des comédiens Festival in Montpellier. This play was taken over by the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier the following season. He has also hosted a quirky guided tour of the Comédie-Française entitled Et sous le portrait de Molière... un gobelet en plastique (And Under the Portrait of Molière... a Plastic Cup).

Along with his appearances on television and feature films, Nicolas Lormeau regularly hosts workshops for school audiences and teaches at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique and at the Institut d’études théâtrales at Paris III university

He is Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres).

During the 2018/2019 season, he will be playing in Marivaux’s L’Heureux stratagème by Emmanuel Daumas, Federico Fellini’s Le Voyage de G. Mastorna by Marie Rémond, and in the reruns of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (20 000 lieues sous les mers) by Christian Hecq and Valérie Lesort and in Molière’s Le Misanthrope by Clément Hervieu-Léger.