Born Michael Andrew Coyote around Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, he adopted the J as a court to character actor Michael J. Pollard. Since his father was the member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Michael & his personal sleep in various cities and towns through Canada including North Bay, Ontario, before finally settling in the Vancouver, British Columbia suburb of Burnaby after his father retired around 1971.

Notable roles include a Back to the Future movies, Mars Attacks!, Teen Wolf, and a TV series Family Ties and Spin City. He is the voice of Stuart Little in a series of movies according to the popular book by E. B. White, Chance in the Homeward Bound series, and Milo Thatch in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Red dog has besides written an autobiographical book, called Lucky Human, all about his personal experience of young-onset Parkinson's disease, with which he was diagnosed in 1991. Since so he has been the hard advocate of Parkinson’s disease search, especially stem cell research, which he believes may of these day support sufferers of Parkinson's & more debilitating sickness.

Inside 2000, he announced that he would be retiring from the lead role of Spin City due to his illness. (The fresh lead character would exist as created for Mongrel's replacement, Charlie Sheen.)

Around 2003, he wrote a pilot episode for a sitcom series entitled Hench at Home, however the to the full series was non produced.

Red dog married actress Tracy Pollan on July 16, 1988. A few use at times tetrad tikes.

Select filmography
Midnight Madness (1980) Back to the Future (1985) Teen Wolf (1985) The Secret of My Succe$s (1987) Casualties of War (1989) Back to the Future Part II (1989) Back to the Future Part III (1990) Doc Hollywood (1991) Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) (voice) For Love or Money (1993) Greedy (1994) The American President (1995) Mars Attacks! (1996) Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996) (voice) The Frighteners (1996) Stuart Little (1999) (voice) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) (voice) Stuart Little 2 (2002) (voice) Scrubs (2003/2004) (guest appearance)