Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially The Student Nurses (1970) and Terminal Island (1974).

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Rothman was raised in Los Angeles after her family relocated there in 1945. She studied sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles for two years before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley. She says she became interested in filmmaking after seeing The Seventh Seal (1957), "what is still my favorite film of all time... I didn't, at that point, know how to become a filmmaker. I didn't even think it was possible. When I saw it I thought to myself, 'This is what I would like to do. I would like to make a film like this.' Highly thoughtful, European-like, [laughs] small films. I wanted to be a writer-director."

From 1960 to 1963, Rothman studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California where she met her husband, filmmaker Charles S. Swartz. She was mentored by the chairman of the cinema department, Bernard Cantor. She became the first woman to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship, awarded annually to the director of a student film. This, along with her academic qualifications, garnered her a job offer from Roger Corman in 1964, to work as his assistant. (Corman chose her over another applicant, who later became his wife Julie.)

"It was rare for anyone who did not have family connections to find employment in the film industry, in or outside of the jurisdiction of the labor unions", recalled Rothman later. "It was even rarer for a woman to be hired. It was traditional to exclude us from nearly all types of work behind the camera."

Rothman worked in a variety of jobs for Corman, on films such as Beach Ball (1965), Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), and Queen of Blood (1966). Rothman:

I did everything: write new scenes, scout locations, cast actors, direct new sequences and edit final cuts. It was a busy, exhilarating time. Roger did not teach me these skills, I learned them in film school. But he did share his greater experience with me, giving me useful criticism and, equally important, information on how to efficiently organize work on the set so that a film could be shot on schedule. The schedules he set were much shorter than those of the major studios. Since it was his own money he was using, Roger did not want a film to go either over schedule or over budget. He also taught me a valuable lesson in psychology: he encouraged me, often expressing his confidence in my abilities, and I therefore tried to do the best work for him that I could.

Corman had Rothman reshoot large segments of the movie that became Blood Bath (1966). "I shot about another 30 minutes of original footage and it was made into what I can only call...a mish-mosh", she recalls. "Unintended joint collaboration would be a more accurate way of putting it. [laughs]" She and Jack Hill share directorial credit for the film.

Her work impressed Corman enough to give her her first full directing job on It's a Bikini World (shot in 1965 but not released until 1967), which he financed. However she did not enjoy the experience: