Peter Coyote Biography

Fast Facts

• Was employed as a dock worker and a feather peddler before his film career began
• Served as chairman of the California State Arts Council from 1976 to '83
• Made his film debut with an uncredited bit in 1978's Sgt
• Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Tested for the role of Indiana Jones in 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The next year, director Steven Spielberg cast him in a pivotal part in E
• T
• the Extra-Terrestrial
• Won a 1993 Pushcart Prize for nonfiction for Carla's Story, a chapter from his memoir Sleeping Where I Fall about his days in the '60s and '70s counterculture
• Served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1996 and wrote about the experience for the magazine Mother Jones
• Has a distinctive voice that has brought him a considerable amount of voice-over work, including narrating 2005's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• Worked for Baykeepers, an organization that tracked polluters of the San Francisco Bay
• Was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest in August 2011