|
|
|
|
| Birth Name(s) : Peter Coyote |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
|
Partner:
|
| Profession:
N/A |
| << Add Peter Coyote To Your Favorites |
|
Full Peter Coyote Biography
Coyote was born Robert Peter Cohon in New York City, the son of Ruth (née Fidler) and Morris Cohon, an investment banker. His father was of Sephardic Jewish descent and his mother came from a working-class Ashkenazi Jewish family. Her father, trained as a rabbi in Russia, fled the Czar's draft, and eventually ran a small candy-store in the Bronx. Coyote was raised in a "highly intellectual" and "cultural" family involved in left-wing politics. He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey and graduated from Dwight Morrow High School there in 1960. After graduating from Grinnell College with a BA in English Literature in 1964, and despite having been accepted at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Peter Coyote moved to the West Coast where he studied in the Master's Degree in Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University.
From 1975 to 1983 Coyote was a member of the California State Arts Council, the state agency which determines art policy for the state. After his first year, Coyote was elected chairman by his peers three years in a row and during his tenure as chairman, the Council's overhead expenses dropped from 50% to 15%, the lowest in the State, and the Arts Council budget rose from $1 million to $16 million. More importantly, his council introduced the idea of artists as "creative problem solvers" and by paying artists to "solve problems for the state" rather than make art, they by-passed the objections of many conservative law-makers. Coyote engineered relationships with 14 departments of State which began to use artists in a variety of capacities, paying 50 cents on the dollar for it, to boot. It was an immense success and gave him the confidence (after 12 years in the counter-culture) to try his hand at film-acting.
In 1978, Coyote began acting again ("to shake the rust out") appearring in plays at San Francisco's award-winning Magic Theater. While playing the lead in the World Premiere of Sam Shepard's True West, a Hollywood agent approached him, and his film career began in 1980 with Die Laughing. Coyote chose his nom de plume after a spiritual encounter with a coyote while on peyote. In recounting the story to Paiute-Shoshone shaman, Rolling Thunder, he took the name as a way of honoring the encounter. He did supporting roles in Tell Me a Riddle, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,1981's Southern Comfort, and as the mysterious scientist "Keys" in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Coyote's first starring role was in the 1982 sci-fi adventure Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swan.
As Leonard Maltin once wrote, "Coyote's no rubber-stamp leading man," but he seems comfortable with that. "I'm a Zen Buddhist student first, actor second," Coyote has said. "If I can't reconcile the two lives, I'll stop acting. I spend more time off-screen than on." In addition to his movie work in more recent films such as Sphere, A Walk to Remember, and Erin Brockovich, Coyote has also appeared in many made-for-TV movies and miniseries, and he does commercial voice-overs. Coyote was cast in lead roles on several television series: The 4400 in 2004 and The Inside in 2005. After The Inside was cancelled, Coyote returned to The 4400 as a special guest star for their two-part season finale, then joined the cast of ABC's series Commander in Chief as a Vice-Presidential nominee.
Also in 2005, Coyote served as the narrator for several prominent projects including the documentary film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the National Geographic-produced PBS documentary based on Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. He also narrated an episode of the series Lost in April 2006.
Many of Coyote's stories from the 1967 to 1975 counter-culture period are included in his memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, published by Counterpoint Press in April 1998. One of the stories incorporated into his book is "Carla's Story," which was awarded the 1993–1994 Pushcart Prize, a national prize for excellence in writing, published by a non-commercial literary magazine.
(selected roles)
- Five Dollars a Day (2008) .... Bert Kruger
- Brothers & Sisters (2007)
- Shadows of Atticus (2007)
- Behind Enemy Lines II (2006)
- The 4400
- Commander in Chief
- Deepwater (2005) .... Herman Finch
- The Inside .... Special Agent Virgil "Web" Webster
- Grand rôle, Le (2004) .... Rudolph Grichenberg
- Bon voyage (2003) .... Alex Winckler
- Femme Fatale (2002) .... Watts
- Jack the Dog (2001) .... Alfred Stieglitz
- Erin Brockovich (2000) .... Kurt Potter
- Patch Adams (1998) .... Bill Davis
- Sphere (1998) .... Captain Harold C. Barnes
- Breach of Conduct (1994)
- Kika (1993) .... Nicholas
- Bitter Moon (1992)
- A Grande Arte (1991)
- Heart of Midnight (1988) .... Sharpe/Larry
- Un homme amoureux (1987) .... Steve Elliott
- Jagged Edge (1985) .... Thomas Kasny
- The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) .... Detective Ringwald
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) .... Keys
- Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) .... Porter Reese
- Die Laughing (1980) .... Davis |
|
|
| Add Peter Coyote Biography (SuperUSERS) + |
| Add Peter Coyote Review/Comment
|
HQ Peter Coyote Pictures (1) | Random Peter Coyote Picture
|
| << Back to the Peter Coyote Homepage |
|
