Kitchen was born in Leicester, Leicestershire. As a young boy (circa 1960) he was head chorister in the Church of the Martyrs choir where he was a regular soloist. He worked with the National Youth Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1969, while still at RADA, he won the "Emile Littler Award" for 'outstanding talent and aptitude for the professional theatre'.
Michael Kitchen was discovered at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) by talent agent Peter Froggatt of Plant & Froggatt Ltd. Since the early 1970s, Kitchen has been a fixture of British television. His early appearances include roles in Play for Today (Hell's Angels by David Agnew, 1971), Thriller and Beasts. He then played the role of Martin in the original production of Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle; Peter in Stephen Poliakoff's Caught on a Train; Edmund in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of King Lear; the Antipholi in the same series' production of The Comedy of Errors; Private Bamforth in the 1979 BBC television play of The Long and the Short and the Tall; Rochus Misch in The Bunker; In 1993 he appeared in an episode of the BBC police drama Between the Lines; as Berkeley Cole in Out of Africa, the King of the United Kingdom in To Play the King (1993) (a character recognisably modelled on Prince Charles); an English land agent during the Irish Famine in The Hanging Gale (1993); and a recurring role as Bill Tanner in the Pierce Brosnan Bond films GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Other films include Enchanted April (1992), Fatherland (1994), Doomsday Gun (1994), The Hanging Gale (1995), Kidnapped (1995), Mrs. Dalloway (1997), The Railway Children (1999), Proof of Life (2000) as Ian Havery and My Week with Marilyn (2011).
Since 2002, Kitchen has starred in the ITV mystery-drama Foyle's War as the lead character, DCS Christopher Foyle. He is also a producer for the show
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