Peter Coyote
Born: October 10 1942
Where: Colver, Pennsylvania, USA
The veteran actor is probably best known for the role of Keys in Stephen Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
A prolific performer, he has appeared in a string of roles including Cross Creek with Mary Steenburgen and Jagged Edge with Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges.
He has also developed a lucrative sideline as a voiceover specialist with more than seventy films under his belt.
After graduating in English Literature in 1964 from Grinnell College, Coyote moved to the West Coast to pursue a Master's Degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.
After a short apprenticeship at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical political street theater.
In the Mime Troupe, he was soon acting and writing and directed the first cross-country to tour of the often banned The Minstrel Show, Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel.
The following year, his play Olive Pits 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.
He was a founding member of the Diggers, an anarchistic group who supplied free food and medicine to San Francisco's runaways.
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 skills back.
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.
He made his feature debut in the 1980 comedy Die Laughing and went on to star in the excellent Deliverance-style Southern Comfort.
Roles followed in The Legend of Billie Jean, Jagged Edge, Outrageous Fortune, Heart of Midnight and the drama Crooked Hearts.
In 1992, he starred alongside Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas in Bitter Moon and switched styles for the action thriller Terminal Justice.
Roles followed in Sphere, Patch Adams and he starred alonside Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich in 2000.
In 2002, he starred in Brian de Palma's Femme Fatale and in the Polish brother's surreal Northfork.
An avid outdoorsman, Coyote apparently considers a year without at least one month living rough a waste.
Recent work includes the role of a German spy in Jean Paul Rappeneau's brisk farce Bon Voyage.
