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.
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 20M $ 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 Laurence 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 in the final season of House and worked in New York on White Collar. He then went back to Showtime for another episode of Dexter.
Autumn 2012 he worked in Paris with Jean Reno on the series Jo, before travelling to Atlanta to shoot The Walking Dead.
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 asked him back to direct Low Winters Sun in Detroit before heading back to New York to shoot the season opener of White Collar. From there 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 Black Sails for Starz, (second season).
In 2014 he started the year in New York on The Americans then worked with Diane Kruger on The Bridge. He won the OFTA award for Best Direction in a Drama Series – The walking Dead.
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 finale of Fear the Walking Dead season 1 in Los Angeles, before crossing the country to direct episode 4 of The Americans season 4 in New York. He finished out the year with the season finale of NOS4A2, and episodes of the Suites spin-off Pearson and Netflix’s Nightflyers.
