Stephen Roark Gyllenhaal (/ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/; born October 4, 1949; Cleveland) is an American film director and poet. He is the father of actors Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal directed the film adaptation of Pete Dexter's novel Paris Trout, which was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won him a DGA Award. In 1990, Gyllenhaal directed A Family of Spies, which was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy. In 1992, he directed the feature film Waterland, starring Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke. From 1993 onward, he focused mainly on directing for television, including an episode of the ABC series Twin Peaks. He directed his son Jake, then 14 years old, in a 1994 episode of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street. Gyllenhaal directed several episodes of the CBS series Numb3rs, The Mentalist, Hawthorne, Army Wives, Rectify, and Blue Bloods. In 2011, Gyllenhaal directed Girl Fight, starring Anne Hathaway, for which he received a DGA nomination for outstanding directing achievement in television movies.

He is also a poet, published in literary journals such as Prairie Schooner and Nimrod. His first poetry collection, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, was published in June 2006 by the New York literary small press Cantarabooks, run by Cantara Christopher.

In 2013, Gyllenhaal directed a pilot originally titled Sworn to Silence, which aired as the Lifetime television film An Amish Murder. It stars Neve Campbell as a local police detective who must solve a murder case connected to the Amish community from which she was shunned many years earlier. Gyllenhaal is also in post-production on a documentary about dream interpretation titled Exquisite Continent.