Stephen Lennhoff is a London-based, American-born film and television director, producer, and writer who has made numerous successful and award-winning shows for various UK and USA broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Discovery, PBS, and MTV.
Born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1960, Stephen graduated from Boston College with a Master's degree in Art History. In 1983, he moved to the UK and attended the London International Film School, where he created his first drama short, "Highway Hotel", a cryptic work inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper.
Stephen began his directing career by making music videos for bands such as Black Sabbath and Dr. & The Medics, including the video for their number one hit single "Spirit In the Sky". He also produced and directed several entertainment news stories for MTV before transitioning to UK broadcast television.
His early TV directing credits include "Sexual Intercourse Began in 1963", a drama documentary detailing the trial of D. H Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and numerous programs for Channel 4's flagship Arts series "Without Walls". During this period, he collaborated with prominent cultural figures such as Germaine Greer, Erica Jong, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Camille Paglia, and Frederic Raphael, helping them to visualize their arguments for TV.
Stephen has also directed several documentaries for Channel 4's groundbreaking "Out" series, including "Skin Complex", which explored the use of Skinhead imagery among gay subcultures. In the years that followed, he directed multiple stories for the classic UK cult series "Eurotrash", numerous episodes of the long-running adventure travel series "Globetrekker" for Discovery USA and PBS, and took high-profile entertainers on the road with popular UK series such as "Graham Norton's Unzipped" (Channel 4),"Dom Joly's Happy Hour, India" (Sky 1),and "Paul O'Grady's America" (ITV).
Building on his comedy credentials, Stephen directed the feature film "Rhythm and Blues", a campy cult comedy set in the seedy underworld of London's gay male escorts, which premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2000. For a brief period, he resided in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he directed an eclectic mix of drama and comedy for Irish and British TV, including the alternative comedy travel series "How Low Can You Go - Reality Check", several episodes of the Irish language teen drama "Seacht", and the Irish crime drama series "Maru".
Stephen has continued to work in the factual realm, producing and directing documentaries such as "Confessions of an IRA Informer" (BBC),the IFTA-nominated series "Death Duties" (RTE),and "Come Fly With Me, The Real Story of Pan Am", featuring narration by Honor Blackman (BBC, BBC America).
