Peter Coyote

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Peter Coyote (born Robert Peter Cohon October 10, 1941) is an American actor and author. He has acted in over 70 films and has narrated many documentaries and audio books. His voice work includes narrarating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has also served as an announcer during Oscar telecasts.

He is the cofounder, with Emmett Grogan, of the San Francisco Diggers and a veteran of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Coyote became a member, and later chairman, of the California State Arts Council from 1975 to 1983. In the late 1970s, he shifted from acting on stage to acting in films. In the 1990s and 2000s, he acted in several television shows.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Counter-cultural activities 1.3 California State Arts Council member 1.4 Film and television acting 1.5 Writing activities 2 Trivia 3 Works 4 External links

Biography

Early years

Coyote was born in Colver, Pennsylvania to Morris Cohon (a businessman of Sephardic Jewish descent) and Ruth Fidler (who came from a middle-class Jewish family). 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.

Counter-cultural activities

After a short apprenticeship at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical political street theater whose members were arrested for performing in parks without permits. Coyote acted, wrote scripts, and directed in the Mime Troupe. He directed the first cross-country tour of The Minstrel Show, Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, a controversial play closed by 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 Coyote co-wrote, directed and performed in, won a Special Obie Award from The Village Voice newspaper.

From 1967 to 1975, Coyote became a prominent member of the San Francisco counter-culture community and a 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.

California State Arts Council member

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 $14 million. It has never been higher since.

Film and television acting

In 1978, Coyote began doing 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 stage name because he claims to have had a healing spiritual encounter with a coyote. 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).

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.

Writing activities

As a writer, Coyote has a mythopoetic style reminiscent of Michael Ventura, the product of many years of self-examination. Peter Coyote's left-wing politics are evident in his articles for Mother Jones magazine some of which he wrote as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and his disagreements with David Horowitz in his autobiography Sleeping Where I Fall. In 2007 he aired Outside the Box with Peter Coyote starting on LinkTv's special, Special: The End of Oil - Part 2.

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.

Trivia

• He was one of the organizers of a group of twelve students who traveled to Washington, D.C. during the Cuban Missile Crisis supporting U.S. President John F. Kennedy's "peace race." Kennedy invited the group into the White House (the first time protesters had ever been so recognized) and they met for several hours with McGeorge Bundy.

• Coyote's first starring role was in the 1982 sci-fi adventure Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swan.

• His voice is very similar to that of Henry Fonda.

• He is fluent in French, as evidenced by his appearance in several French movies, such as Bon Voyage.

• In 1978, he directed a production of Harold Pinter's one act, The Dumbwaiter at the Above Board Theatre in San Francisco. On the same bill was Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape directed by San Francisco writer, Michael Corrigan.

Works

Narrator

• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1988)
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
• The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard
• The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda
• The West by Ken Burns
• In the Light of Reverence (2001)

Writer

• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz, Peter Coyote
• Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle autobiography by Peter Coyote; 1998 ISBN 1-58243-011-X

Illustrator

• Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps by Emmett Grogan; 1990

Television and film actor (selected roles)

• 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
• Breach of Conduct (1994)
• Bitter Moon (1992)
• 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
• Kika (1993) .... Nicholas
• Bitter Moon (1992)
• A Grande Arte (1991)
• Heart of Midnight (1988) .... Sharpe/Larry
• Un homme amoureux (1987) .... Steve Elliott
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) .... Keys
• Die Laughing (1980) .... Davis

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