Peter attended Bennington College in Vermont, graduating in 1991 with a degree in drama. Performances there included "Heartpiece", "The Author's Voice", "Landscape of the Body" and "Video Priests". His debut film performance was as Tito in Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion (1995), which also starred Kevin Corrigan. He is an active off-Broadway theatre actor and has appeared in plays such as "I Wanna Be Adored", Jonathan Marc Sherman's "Hollywood", "Imperfect Love", "A Misty Christmas" and two productions of "Saint Stanislaus outside the House". He is also a playwright whose plays include "Frog" (1990).

November 2004 - engaged to theater director Erica Schmidt.Has achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism in which the body is perfectly formed but the bones initially modelled in cartilage, the long bones of the arms and legs, do not grow long enough. Velázquez painted a fine portrait of a man with this condition which hangs in the Prado in Madrid.Is a vegetarian. Anytime you see him eating a meat product on screen, it is a tofu product (such as the tofu "beef" jerky, in The Station Agent (2003)).Son of an elementary school music teacher and retired insurance salesman. Both parents are of average height, as is older brother, John, a violinist.