Peter Coyote

Infobox actor


caption = Coyote as Vice President Warren Keaton in "Commander-in-Chief"
birthname = Robert Peter Cohon
birthdate = birth date and age|1941|10|10
birthplace = New York City, New York
United States
spouse = Marilyn McCann (1977-1991)
Stefanie Pleet (1998-)
homepage = http://www.petercoyote.com/
emmyawards = Outstanding Historical Program
1993 "The Pacific Century"

Peter Coyote (born October 10, 1941) is an American actor and author, and has narrated many documentaries and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has also served as on-camera cohost of the 2000 Oscar telecasts.

Coyote was one of the founders of the Diggers, an anarchist group active in Haight-Ashbury during the mid-1960s. Coyote was also an actor, writer director with the San Francisco Mime Troupe; his prominence in the San Francisco counter-culture scene led to his being interviewed for the highly acclaimed book, "Voices from the Love Generation." He acted in and directed the first cross-country tour of the Minstrel Show, and his play "Olive Pits" (co-authored with Mime Troupe member Peter Berg) won the Troupe an Obie Award from the New York City-based Village Voice. Coyote became a member, and later chairman, of the California 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. He is fluent in Spanish and French.

Biography

Early life

Coyote was born Robert Peter Cohon (=Cohen כוהן) [http://www.nobhillgazette.com/profilecoyote.html Profile ] ] in New York City, the son of Ruth (née Fidler) and Morris Cohon, an investment banker. [ [http://www.filmreference.com/film/23/Peter-Coyote.html Peter Coyote Biography (1942-) ] ] 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 [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/7741/edition_id/147/format/html/displaystory.html j. - Peter Coyote - `an outsider with a Jewish sense of humor' ] ] involved in left-wing politics. [ [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/32919/format/html/displaystory.html j. - Tie Dayenu ] ] He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey [ [http://www.jackmagazine.com/issue4/petercoyotebio.html Peter Coyote Bio] , "Jack Magazine". Accessed November 25, 2007. "At fourteen he was a campaign worker in the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign in his home town of Englewood New Jersey."] and graduated from the Dwight-Englewood School there in 1960. Coyote later said that he was "half black and half white inside" because of the influence of Susie Nelson, his family's African-American housekeeper, who was like a second mother to him. [ [http://www.hendersondispatch.com/index.php?pSetup=hendersondailydispatch&curDate=20080429&pageToLoad=showFreeArticle.php&type=art&index=01 "Susie Nelson’s other son," Al Wheless, The Daily Dispatch, Henderson, North Carolina, April 29, 2008.]

While a student at Grinnell College, in 1962, Coyote 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. The group received wide press coverage. They photocopied the resulting headlines and sent them to every college in the United States.

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 Actors' 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, along with Emmett Grogan, Peter Berg, Judy Goldhaft, Kent Minault, Nina Blasenheim, David Simpson, Jane Lapiner, and Billy Murcott, of the Diggers, an anarchist group known for operating without money and anonymously. They created provocative 'theater' events designed to heighten awareness around issues of private property, consumerism, and identification with one's work. They fed nearly 600 people a day for "free", asking only that people pass through a six foot by six foot square known as The Free Frame of Reference. They ran a Free Store, (where not only the goods, but the management roles were free), a Free Medical Clinic, and even a short-lived Free Bank. The Diggers evolved into a group known as the Free Family, which established chains of communes around the Pacific Northwest and Southwest. Coyote was the best known resident of the Black Bear Ranch commune in Siskiyou County, California.

After dropping out in the Sixties and Seventies, Coyote became a dedicated practitioner of American Zen Buddhism, and is ordained in that tradition. His audiobook recordings of Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Paul Reps's Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and Carlos Castaneda's are well-known and well-respected. He was a friend of Rolling Thundera Shoshone Medicine man who cured him of an illness using traditional medicine. He has also been a friend of Leonard Peltier since the Sixties and along with author Peter Mathiessen, is one of Peltier's two non-native advisers.

California Arts Council member

From 1975 to 1983, Coyote was a member of the California 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.

Film and television acting

In 1978, Coyote began acting again ("to shake the rust out") appearing in plays at San Francisco's award-winning Magic Theatre. 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. After telling the story to Paiute-Shoshone shaman, Rolling Thunder, who challenged him not to dismiss it as a hallucination, 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 "", "Outrageous Fortune" and "The Jagged Edge" Since then, he has done over 120 films for theaters and television and has played starring roles for some of the world's finest directors, including Roman Polanski (Bitter Moon), Pedro Almodovar (Kika), Martin Ritt (Cross Creek), Jean-Paul Rappeneau (Bon Voyage), Diane Kurys (A Man in Love), Walter Salles (Exposure).

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 and the next year did a four episode turn as Sally Field's disreputable boyfriend in "Brothers and Sisters".

Also in 2005, Coyote served as the narrator for several prominent projects including the documentary film "" 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. He is currently narrating the new 12 part Ken Burns series on The National Park, and fifteen episodes for the National Geographic's Explorer series.

Writing

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 1996 Democratic National Convention; in his disagreements with David Horowitz; and in his autobiography "Sleeping Where I Fall". In 2006, he 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".

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," about a 16-year-old mother who lived communally with Coyote, and who, after learning of her husband's murder, became a drug addict, then a prostitute, had her children stolen, and continued to spiral downhill until she turned her life around. This story was published in ZYZZYVA and awarded the 1993–1994 Pushcart Prize. Mr. Coyote has a website at www.petercoyote.com which features the titles of all his movies and extended samples of much of his writing. He is a member at RedRoom.com, a web-site for authors.

Works

Narrator

*""
*"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" (1988)
*"Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen
*"The Education of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter
*"Contrary Warriors"
*"The Breathtaker" by Alice Blanchard
*"" by Carlos Castaneda
*"The West" by Ken Burns
*"The History of Sex" (1999)
*"National Geographic: The Battle For Midway"Prod by Michael Rosenfeld (1999)
*"In the Light of Reverence" (2001)
*"Color of War"
*"Out of the Blue (2002 film)"
*"The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Miguel Ruiz
*""
*"Understanding: Extraterrestrials"
*"The Tribe"
*"The War Prayer" (2006)
*" [http://www.stealingamericathemovie.org Stealing America: Vote by Vote] " (2008)

Writer

*"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)
*"All Roads Lead Home" (2008) .... Hock
*"Five Dollars a Day" (2008) .... Bert Kruger
*"Brothers & Sisters" (2007) .... Mark August
*"Behind Enemy Lines II" (2006) .... President Adair T. Manning
*"The 4400" (2004 - 2006) .... Dennis Ryland
*"Commander in Chief" (2005 - 2006) .... Warren Keaton
*"Deepwater" (2005) .... Herman Finch
*"The Inside" (2005) .... Special Agent Virgil "Web" Webster
*"Grand rôle, Le" (2004) .... Rudolph Grichenberg
*"Bon voyage" (2003) .... Alex Winckler
*"A Walk to Remember" (2002) ... Reverend Sullivan
*"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
*"Murder in My Mind" (1997) .... Arthur Lefcourt
*"Moonlight and Valentino" (1995) .... Paul
*"Breach of Conduct" (1994) .... Col. Andrew Case
*"Kika" (1993) .... Nicholas
*"Bitter Moon" (1992) .... Oscar
*"A Grande Arte" (1991) .... Peter Mandrake
*"Heart of Midnight" (1988) .... Sharpe/Larry
*"Un homme amoureux" (1987) .... Steve Elliott
*"The Blue Yonder" (1985) .... Max Knickerbocker
*"Jagged Edge" (1985) .... Thomas Kasny
*"The Legend of Billie Jean" (1985) .... Detective Ringwald
*"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) .... Keys
*"" (1982) .... Porter Reese
*"Die Laughing" (1980) .... Davis

References

External links

* [http://www.petercoyote.com/ Official website]
*imdb name|id=0001075|name=Peter Coyote
*tvtome person|id=80036|name=Peter Coyote
* [http://www.diggers.org/ The Diggers Archives]
* [http://www.diggers.org/freefall/freefall.html The Free-Fall Chronicles] excerpts from "Sleeping Where I Fall"
* [http://heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.9.PeterCoyote.htm Heyoka Magazine Interview with John LeKay]