Background

Ethnicity: Peter's father was of Sephardic Jewish descent and his mother came from a working-class Ashkenazi Jewish family.

Peter Coyote was born as Robert Peter Cohon on October 10, 1941, in New York City, New York, to Morris Cohon, an investment banker, and Ruth (née Fidler) Cohon.

Education

In 1960, Peter graduated from Dwight Morrow High School. In 1961, he entered Grinnell College, where, in 1964, he received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. He also obtained a master's degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University where he studied acting with the San Francisco Actors Workshop.

Career

After a short apprenticeship at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical political street theater which had recently been arrested for performing in the City's parks without permits.

In the Mime Troupe, he was soon acting, writing and directing. He directed the first cross-country to tour of "The Minstrel Show, Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel," a highly controversial piece closed by the authorities in several cities. The cast was arrested several times before a tour of eastern colleges and universities, ending triumphantly in New York City, where they were invited and sponsored by comedian Dick Gregory. The following year, a play, "Olive Pits," that Peter co-wrote, directed and performed in, won a Special OBIE from New York's Village Voice newspaper.

From 1967 to 1975, Peter took off to "do the Sixties" where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counter-culture community and founding member of the Diggers, an anarchistic group who supplied free food, free housing and free medical aid to the hordes of runaways who appeared during the Summer of Love. The Diggers evolved into a group known as the Free Family which established chains of communes around the Pacific Northwest and Southwest. Many of the stories of that period are included in his memoir called "Sleeping Where I Fall" published by Counterpoint Press in April of 1998.

From 1975 to1983 Peter was a member of the California State Arts Council, the State agency which determines art policy. After his first year, he 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 one-to-fourteen million dollars annually.

These political victories, among others, fostered Peter's decision to re-enter acting. In 1978, he began to work at San Francisco's award-winning Magic Theater doing plays continuously "to shake out the rust" and get his unused skills back in working order. While playing the lead in the World Premiere of Sam Shepard's "True West," he was spotted by a Hollywood agent who asked to represent him. Seventy plus films later, Peter is still acting.

Beginning in the early '80s, Peter began doing voice-overs, which has led to a very successful side venture, now numbering over 120 films.

Achievements

• Peter Coyote's varied film and television career has made him one of the most recognizable character actors of his generation. His film credits include E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Patch Adams, Bitter Moon, and Erin Brockovich. His frequent television movie appearances include roles in The Hitchhiker, The People vs. Jean Harris, and Execution of Justice.
  
  Coyote's voice alone is recognizable to many from his narration work for National Geographic specials and other award-winning documentaries. He won an Emmy in 1992 for his narration of the "The Meiji Revolution" episode, part of the PBS American Experience ten-part series called "The Pacific Century."
  
  One of his stories "Carla's Story" was awarded the 1993-1994 Pushcart Prize, a national prize for excellence in writing, published by a non-commercial literary magazine. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator in 2015 for his work on The Roosevelts.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education

    (With a title inspired by a Bob Dylan lyric that Peter Coy...)

    2015
  • Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

    (In his energetic, funny, and intelligent memoir, Peter Co...)

    1999

• movie

  • Good Kill

    (The film tells the story of a Las Vegas fighter pilot tur...)

    2015
  • The Legend Of Billie Jean

    (When local rich kid Hubie Pyatt (Barry Tubb) steals and w...)

    1985
  • Erin Brockovich

    (Julia Roberts won the Best Actress Oscar for her portraya...)

    2000
  • Patch Adams

    (Robin Williams is Patch Adams, a doctor who will do anyth...)

    1998
  • Jagged Edge

    (A defense attorney (Glenn Close) falls for her client, a ...)

    1985
  • Hemingway & Gellhorn

    (The powerful story of the war-torn romance between litera...)

    2012
  • A Walk to Remember

    (Love brings together what peer pressure and lifestyles se...)

    2002
  • E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial

    (Steven Spielberg's contemporary classic! A stranded alien...)

    1982
  • Southern Comfort

    (During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards is t...)

    1981
  • Cross Creek

    (The Oscar nominated true story of the woman who wrote "Th...)

    1983
  • Outrageous Fortune

    (Two women meet and it's hate at first sight.)

    1987
  • Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story 1980
  • Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann 1982
  • Strangers Kiss 1983
  • Heartbreakers 1984
  • Bitter Moon 1992

Religion

Coyote is an ordained Zen Buddhist priest in the Soto lineage of Sunryu Suzuki-Roshi who has been practicing for 40 years and is currently studying for his transmission ceremony, granting him independence from his teacher.

Politics

Coyote is and has been engaged in political and social causes since his early teens. His involvement with politics began in high school. At fourteen, he was a campaign worker in the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign in his home town of Englewood, New Jersey.

As a student at Grinnell College in Iowa, Peter was one of the organizers of a group of twelve students who went to Washington during the Cuban Missile crisis and fasted for three days, protesting the resumption of nuclear testing, and supporting President Kennedy's "peace race". President Kennedy invited the group into the White House (the first time protesters had ever been so recognized), and they met for several hours with MacGeorge Bundy. This meeting received national front-page media attention, and the Grinnell group xeroxed the coverage and sent it to every college in the United States, precipitating the first mass student demonstration of 25,000 in Washington, in February 1962. At the end of his school term, Peter was elected President of the Council of House Presidents, the governing student body at his college.

Upon arriving in California, Coyote became associated with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a loose-knit group that was committed to a sort of left-wing, street-theater activism that epitomized the "tune in, turn-on, and drop out" philosophy that was quickly becoming popular. Out of the mime troupe grew the Diggers, a more formal collective that aimed to provide free goods and services to the masses. Members lived communally, first in California, and later in other Western states. Though ideologically committed to their goals of eliminating hunger, poverty, and greed, Coyote and The Diggers’ personal indulgences, in the form of sex and drugs, often overshadowed their desire to change the world.

In 2006, Coyote developed a political television show for Link TV called "The Active Opposition" and in 2007 created Outside the Box with Peter Coyote starting on Link TV's special, Special: The End of Oil – Part 2. He has also authored a number of articles for Mother Jones magazine, which highlight his left-wing politics views.

Membership

Peter Coyote is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Radio and Television Artists and The Player’s Club, Baykeepers.

Personality

Peter's mellow voice is often compared to Henry Fonda's. He continues to lend his rich voice to narrations for commercials and documentaries and often donates his voice to films that support issues close to his heart.

Peter has made his home in Northern California since the early '70s. An avid outdoorsman, he is also a passionate songwriter, guitarist and amateur photographer.

Interests

• Fishing, photography, songwriting

Connections

In 1975, Coyote married Marilyn McCann, but they divorced in 1998. That year, Peter married Stephanie Pleet. In 2015, the couple broke up. Peter has two grown children, Ariel and Nick.

Father:

Morris Cohon

Mother:

Ruth (née Fidler) Cohon

child:

Ariel Coyote

child:

Nick Coyote

ex-wife:

Marilyn McCann

ex-wife:

Stephanie Pleet

Partner:

Eileen Ewing

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010
• Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations with Those Who Shaped the Era With a compilation of information that has never before been available in one source, this exhaustive reference work provides complete published election returns for all popular Congressional elections, including special elections, in the United States - over 36,000 since 1788.
  1995
• The San Francisco Mime Troupe: The First Ten Years 1975, Ramparts Press, paperback edition, 220 pages. The author is the founder of the troupe. Many drawings, b&w photos, posters, plus an in-depth chronology.
  1975
• Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theater and the San Francisco Mime Troupe eBook: Claudia Orenstein: Kindle Store Festive Revolutions explores the historical origins of the popular forms the Mime Troupe draws on. In old Europe, where performance traditions began, political turmoil blended with festive celebration.
  1999