Stephen Mendel

Stephen Mendel was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and speaks fluent French. He is a dual American/Canadian citizen. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Bishop’s University and further postgraduate studies at Concordia University he began working in theatre, film and television. 

A stint in a children’s musical theatre tour, which took in far northern Canada, crystallized his desire to come to southern California. He’d been in Los Angeles just long enough to have appeared on television shows on all the broadcast networks and movies at the major studios, when he was offered the role of Detective Fred Carson on the CBS series “Night Heat” which ran for five seasons and filmed in Toronto, Canada.

While in Canada, Stephen also had the opportunity to work on mini-series’ such as; “Echoes in the Darkness” TV movies; “The Enigma of Bobby Bittman“ and guest star on other episodic television; “Mariah State“ and “The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” He also hosted broadcast and live charitable events for Big Brothers, Muscular Dystrophy Assoc., the Humane Society, Multiple Sclerosis Assoc., and others.  

Upon returning to Los Angeles, he was soon busy with TV guest star roles; "Criminal Minds", "24", "CSI: Miami", "Las Vegas",  “JAG”, “The Practice”, “Judging Amy”,  “The X-Files”,  “Murder She Wrote”, “L.A. Law” and several mini-series’, “An Inconvenient Woman”, “Tom and Roseanne.”  Features include second leads in; “Provocateur” (starring Jane March), “Midnight Heat” (starring Tim Matheson), and “Jack Frost” as well as leading roles in, “Exception to the Rule” (starring Eric McCormack), “Final Round” (starring Lorenzo Llamas), “Heaven’s Fire” (starring Eric Roberts) and “The Showdown.”

Stephen appeared in the feature, The Terminal, directed by Steven Spielberg starring Tom Hanks but sadly only one of the scenes with Mr. Hanks remains in the finished movie.


Not too long ago, while shooting “CEO”, a major feature directed by Wu Tian Ming (most noted for his films, The King of Masks and The Old Well), Stephen travelled to China (twice), Paris, New York and South Carolina. Stephen has a chameleon like ability to completely change his appearance and is often virtually unrecognizable from one role to the next.


On stage at venues like the Pasadena Playhouse, the Matrix, the Odyssey, the Edison and the Centaur Theatres, he has played Froggy Lesoeur in “The Foreigner”, Gerry in “After Crystal Night” and Frank in  “Educating Rita.”


  A few years ago Stephen decided to complete his Master’s Degree in Theatre and received an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in June of 2001. While there he taught acting, theatre history and audition techniques and studied voice, movement, theatre analysis and criticism and continued to perform frequently on stage.

In 2003 he went through the grueling fourteen week L.A. County Underwater Instructor’s program and became a scuba instructor.  He has since gone on to become a certified instructor with several other agencies (PADI, NAUI etc) and has also become an instructor trainer with two of them. He is also an instructor in First Aid and CPR.

Stephen has a busy voice over career with many radio and television commercials, documentary narration and the voice of Splinter the ninja master rat on the FOX live-action series “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation.”  

Off-stage –camera, he plays the guitar and sings with a group of folk musicians at fundraisers, charitable events and just for fun. He skies, teaches scuba diving, runs, backpacks, bicycles and practices the obscure martial art of aki-jutsu.