ROB REINER
(6 March 1947 – 14 December 2025)
The circumstances surrounding the deaths of Rob Reiner, the American actor and filmmaker, and his wife, the photographer and film producer Michele Singer, were most distressing, in fact almost unbelievable. They were found dead at their home in Brentwood with stab wounds. Their son Nick was arrested for alleged murder, bringing to an end the life and career of one of the most renowned members of the US movie business. Rob Reiner began his career as an actor on television before becoming a very fine director of all genres of film. He received multiple industry awards and such was his distinction in his chosen career, that three of his films, This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally, are lodged in the National Film Registry. Not just one of the good guys, Rob Reiner was a national hero.
Robert Norman Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York City, to the actors Carl and Estelle Reiner. His sister is the poet and playwright Annie Reiner and his brother the painter, actor and director Lucas Reiner. Rob Reiner studied at Beverly Hills High School and then the UCLA Film School. At the age of 19 he formed an improv duo with the actor Larry Bishop, although he had already made his TV debut at the age of 14 in the series Manhunt. During the 1960s he joined the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and also had many small roles on television’s Wagon Train, Batman, The Andy Griffith Show and The Beverly Hillbillies, etc. He also began writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with comedy partner Steve Martin.
As an actor he played Michael ‘Meathead’ Stivic, in All in the Family, the US version of the BBC’s Till Death Us Do Part, which ran for five seasons from 1971. Reiner won two Emmys plus three more nominations, and also gained several Golden Globes. After appearing on The Partridge Family, Reiner and two other writers created the sitcom The Super, set in a New York City apartment block, but it ran for only one season. Reiner’s first feature film as an actor was Enter Laughing, written and directed by his father Carl Reiner and based on his own book about being an actor. It starred José Ferrer and Shelley Winters, with Rob as a minor character, Clark Baxter. Rob also acted in further films including Where’s Poppa?, which Carl Reiner also directed in 1970. It was a Jewish comedy with George Segal, Ruth Gordon and Ron Liebman.
Rob Reiner was in many other films as an actor between directing his own movies and even appeared many times in his own films, such as This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, The Story of Us, Alex and Emma, And So It Goes, A Few Good Men, Shock and Awe and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025), his last film.
Reiner acted in and directed so many great films, that it is difficult to pinpoint the best. Certainly the three titles lodged in the National Film Registry will continue to retain their iconic position. Able to work in any movie genre, Reiner began with his sly mockumentary on an invented rock band, This Is Spinal Tap, then came the moving coming-of-age drama Stand By Me, from the short story by Stephen King, the ultimate romcom When Harry Met Sally with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, and the romcom road movie The Sure Thing, as well as the historical romance The Princess Bride with Robin Wright in the title role. A Few Good Men was an absorbing legal drama with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon, while The American President starring Michael Douglas was a subtle political romance. The Bucket List, with Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, popularized the eponymous wish list, while Shock and Awe covered political journalism. For horror he scared the bejesus out of us and James Caan in Misery, which won Kathy Bates an Oscar for best actress.
Then, of course, there was all that television as Reiner more or less worked for TV during much of his career from 1966 to 2025, picking up the odd Primetime Emmy on the way. Other awards included umpteen Golden Globe nominations, while amongst all his other trophies were nominations from the Academy Awards, Bafta and the Directors Guild of America, plus gongs from other national awards as well as honorary and lifetime achievement awards from the Hollywood Hall of Fame, the Houston and Santa Barbara Festivals and a gala tribute at the Lincoln Centre in 2014.
Rob Reiner first married the actress and director Penny Marshall in 1971, and he adopted her daughter Tracy from her former marriage to Mike ‘Tarzan’ Henry. The couple divorced in 1981. Reiner then married the photographer Michele Singer in 1989 and had three children, Jake, a news reporter, Nick, a troubled soul with drug problems, and a daughter, the filmmaker Romy. At the time of the killing of Rob and Michele Reiner, their son Nick was obviously suffering mentally. It is saddening that his condition allegedly took over his behaviour, although it is hard to fathom how a younger son could have acted in the way he did.
This Is Spinal Tap marked the beginning of Rob Reiner’s directing career and its sequel, Spinal Tap II, came at the end of it. A perfectly rounded conceit but a sad one too that asks if there might have been more to come from Reiner as both actor and director. Rob Reiner died at the age of 78; his wife, Michele Reiner, was 70.
MICHAEL DARVELL