Gyllenhaal was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Virginia Lowrie (née Childs) and Hugh Anders Gyllenhaal. 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. His mentor at Trinity was the poet Hugh Ogden.
He was married to Screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal for 32 years, from 1977 until their divorce was finalized in 2009. From that marriage, he is the father of Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and actor Jake Gyllenhaal. He is also the brother of Anders Gyllenhaal, executive Editor of the Miami Herald.
Gyllenhaal directed the film version of the Pete Dexter novel Paris Trout, which was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won him a DGA Award. 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 ABC television series Twin Peaks. He directed the 2001 TNT television pilot The Warden, based on Lynda La Plante's series The Governor. It 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 CBS series Numb3rs, The Mentalist, Hawthorne, Army Wives and Blue Bloods. In 2011 Gyllenhaal directed Girl Fight which starred Anne Heche and earned Gyllenhaal a DGA Nomination for outstanding directorial achievement in movies for television.
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.
In July 2011 he married Kathleen Man, a filmmaker and professor who was a co-producer on Gyllenhaal's 2012 film Grassroots. Gyllenhaal and Man welcomed son Luke in 2014, after two previous miscarriages.
In 2013, Gyllenhaal directed a backdoor pilot originally titled Sworn to Silence that aired as the Lifetime TV movie An Amish Murder. It stars Neve Campbell as a local police detective who must solve a murder case that involves the Amish Community she was shunned from years ago. Gyllenhaal is also in post-production on a documentary about dream interpretation titled Exquisite Continent.
