Peter Coyote has performed as an actor for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack, and Jean Paul Rappeneau. In 2000 he was the Co-Host for the Oscars with Billy Crystal.
He is an Emmy Award-winning narrator of over 120 documentary films, including Ken Burns' "National Parks," "Prohibition," "The West," "The Dust Bowl," the acclaimed "The Roosevelts" (for which he received his second Emmy nomination in July 2015), "Vietnam," and "The History of Country Music." Mr. Coyote has written a memoir of the 1960’s counter-culture called Sleeping Where I Fall which received universally excellent reviews, appeared on three best-seller lists, sold five printings in hardback and was re-released with a new cover and afterword in May 2009. A chapter from that book, “Carla’s Story,” won the 1993/94 Pushcart Prize for Excellence in non-fiction. His second book, The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education, about mentors and the search for wisdom, was released April 14, 2015, by Counterpoint Press, and in July it was second on the Marin County Best-Sellers list. He has written Unmasking Your True Self: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha, as well as Tongue of a Crow, a collection of poetry. His most recent writing on the practical aspects of Zen Buddhism appears in his book Zen In the Vernacular: Things As It Is (Inner Traditions, 2024).
He has been a serious Zen student for over 40 years. In 2011 he was ordained a priest, and in 2015 received transmission from his teacher and is now an independent Zen teacher with the authority to ordain others.
From 1975 to 1983 he was a member and then Chairman of the California State Arts Council. During his Chairmanship, and under his tenure, expenditures on the arts rose from 1 to 16 million dollars annually.
He is and has been engaged in political and social causes since his early teens and his primary concerns are the environment, voting rights and security of elections, and the threat of nuclear weapons and energy production. He considers his 1952 Dodge Power Wagon to be his least harmful addiction.