Stefan Schwartz

Stefan Schwartz (born 1 May 1963) is an English and Canadian film and television director, writer and actor,^[1][2] most known for the feature film Shooting Fish^[3] and his work on the BBC's Spooks and Luther,^[4] AMC's The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead, as well as The Americans and The Boys.^[5] He is also the creator of Talking Scripts ^[6] with business partner Idris Elba, an iOS app that reads film and TV scripts using different voices for the characters.

For the Swedish footballer, see Stefan Schwarz. For the lobbyist and CDU politician, see Stefan Schwarz (politician). For the SPD politician, see Stefan Schwartze.

Stefan Schwartz
Schwartz in 2020
Born	(1963-05-01) 1 May 1963 (age 61) London, England
Citizenship	British Canadian
Education	University of York
Occupations	Television director Film director writer actor
Years active	1992–present
Children	3

Career

1992–2007

He directed his feature film debut Soft Top Hard Shoulder (1992), starring Peter Capaldi and Phyllis Logan, which won two BAFTAs in Scotland and the London Film Festival's prestigious audience award.^[7] Building on this success in 1995, he directed Giving Tongue, shown as part of BBC2′s Wicked Women series,^[8] and in 1997 wrote and directed Shooting Fish, a crime-caper comedy starring Kate Beckinsale, which won several awards and made over $20 million worldwide.^[9]

He then signed a three-year deal to write and direct for Miramax and wrote screenplays for them, teaming up with notable producers such as Lawrence Bender and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd^[10] before directing The Abduction Club (2002) for Pathe Films.^[11]

His next film as writer/director was the romantic comedy The Best Man starring Stuart Townsend, Amy Smart and Seth Green in 2005.^[12]

2007–2015

After finishing Being Human for Syfy, Stefan directed some episodes of the final season of House and worked in New York on White Collar. He then went back to Showtime for another episode of Dexter.

In autumn 2012, he worked in Paris with Jean Reno on the series Jo, before travelling to Atlanta to shoot The Walking Dead.

In early 2013, he directed the mid-season finale of ABC's hit show Revenge, then went back to work on the final season of Dexter.

AMC then invited him to direct Low Winter Sun in Detroit before heading back to New York to shoot the season opener of White Collar. From there he went to Pittsburgh to direct Chloe Sevigny and James D'Arcy in Those Who Kill, and then to South Africa to shoot the first episode of the second season of Black Sails for Starz.

In 2014, he started the year in New York working on The Americans, then worked with Diane Kruger on The Bridge. He won the OFTA Award for Best Direction in a Drama Series for his work on The Walking Dead.

In the summer of 2014, he completed an episode of the new Starz series Flesh and Bone, set in the world of ballet and written by Adam Rapp and Moira Walley-Beckett, followed by an episode of Power.

2015–2018

In 2015, Stefan returned to Cape Town to shoot two new episodes of Black Sails directing some of the most complex action/VFX sequences on television at that time. In the same year, he also directed the season 1 finale of Fear the Walking Dead in Los Angeles, before crossing the country to direct episode 4 of season 4 of The Americans in New York. He finished out the year with the season finale of NOS4A2, and episodes of the Suits spin-off Pearson and Netflix’s Nightflyers.

2019-2023

He directed two episodes of season 2 of The Boys and was executive producer and pilot director of Fortunate Son, followed by episodes of Apple TV's Suspicion. He was also executive producer of The Mosquito Coast. He has just completed work on Amazon's new show My Lady Jane.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1990	The Lake	Yes	Yes	Short film
1992	Soft Top, Hard Shoulder	Yes	No
1996	Giving Tongue	Yes	No	Television film
1997	Shooting Fish	Yes	Yes
2002	The Abduction Club	Yes	No
2005	The Best Man	Yes	Yes
2020	About Us	Yes	No

Television

As director

Year	Title	Notes
2007	Hustle	2 episodes
	Spooks	2 episodes
2008-09	Crash	7 episodes
2009	Trial & Retribution	1 episode
2010	Luther	2 episodes
2011	Camelot	3 episodes, also co-executive producer 5 episodes
2011-13	Dexter	3 episodes
2012	Being Human	2 episodes
	House	1 episode
2012-13	White Collar	2 episodes
2013	Jo	2 episodes, Miniseries
	The Walking Dead	1 episode
	Revenge	1 episode
	Low Winter Sun	1 episode
2014	Those Who Kill	1 episode
	The Bridge	1 episode
2014-18	The Americans	4 episodes
2015	Flesh and Bone	1 episode, Miniseries
2015-16	Black Sails	3 episodes
2015-17	Fear the Walking Dead	6 episodes
2015-18	Power	3 episodes
2018	Nightflyers	1 episode
2019	NOS4A2	1 episode
	Pearson	1 episode
2019-20	The Boys	2 episodes
2020	Fortunate Son	4 eps, pilot Director, Executive Producer 8 eps
2021	Suspicion	3 episodes
2021-22	The Mosquito Coast	2 eps, Executive Producer 10 eps
2022-23	My Lady Jane	3 episodes

As actor

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1986	Strong Medicine	Pete	Television film
1987	Inspector Morse	Richard Bartlett
1989	The Bill	Clive
	Doctor Who	Knight Commander
1990	Portrait of a Marriage	Phillip
1990-91	Screen Two	Nicholas Hart, Tim	2 episodes