Stephen Roark Gyllenhaal is an American film director and poet.
Background
Gyllenhaal was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Virginia Lowrie (née Childs) (1924-2009) and Hugh Anders Gyllenhaal (1921-1979). He is of Swedish and English descent. Through his father, he is a member of the Gyllenhaal family, and a descendant of the cavalry officer Nils Gunnesson Haal, who was ennobled in 1652 when Queen Christina of Sweden conferred upon him the crest and family name, "Gyllenhaal." Stephen grew up in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia in a close-knit Swedenborgian family and graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1972, with a degree in English.
Career
In 1990 Gyllenhaal directed Family of Spies, which was nominated for 2 Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy. In addition, he directed an episode of the American Broadcasting Company television series Twin Peaks. He directed the 2001 TNT television pilot The Warden, based on Lynda Louisiana Plante"s series The Governor.
lieutenant is about a dynamic and ambitious woman (Ally Sheedy) who is brought in as the young warden of an all-male maximum security prison.
Gyllenhaal has also directed several episodes of the Columbia Broadcasting System series Numb3rs, The Mentalist, Hawthorne, Army Wives and Blue Bloods. He is also a poet, who has been published in literary journals such as Prairie Schooner and Nimrod.
His first collection of poetry, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, was published in June 2006 by Cantara Christopher"s New York-based literary small press, Cantarabooks. Gyllenhaal is also in post-production on a documentary about dream interpretation titled Exquisite Continent.