[4] He got his big break playing hapless fugitive Clovis Poplin in The Sugarland Express (1974), the feature film debut of Steven Spielberg.

[8] He provided lead vocals for "What'll I Do", the main title theme for the Robert Redford film version of The Great Gatsby.

[9] Other film credits include No Mercy (1986), The Pelican Brief (1993), Bio-Dome (1996), Mad City (1997), The Crow: Salvation (2000), The Last Samurai (2003), Grim Prairie Tales (1990), the TV movies Buried Alive (1990), Headspace (2005) and Virus (1995).

He has also made guest appearances on such television series as The Twilight Zone, Murder, She Wrote, Desperate Housewives, Law & Order, The Equalizer, Boston Legal, Castle and Monk.

[17] On The Phil Donahue Show in 1981, Atherton claimed that he was once homosexual but changed due to the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel.

[21] In December 2018, Atherton participated in the Library Foundation's reading of excerpts from book editor and critic, David Kipen's best-seller, Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018.