Rob Reiner, son of a comedy giant who became one in turn, dies at 78
[December 15, 2025]
By JAKE COYLE
Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of
the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The
Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has
died. He was 78.
Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their
home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. A law enforcement
official briefed on the investigation confirmed their identities but
could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Authorities were investigating an “apparent homicide,” said Capt. Mike
Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Fire
Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30
p.m.
Reiner grew up thinking his father, Carl Reiner, didn't understand him
or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in
his father's footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in
comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.
“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in
the shadow of a famous father,’” Reiner said, recalling the temptation
to change his name to “60 Minutes” in October. “And he says, ‘What do
you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to
be like him.”
After starting out as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,”
Reiner's breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear's
“All in the Family” as Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law, Michael
“Meathead” Stivic. But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film
director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any,
era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic “This Is
Spinal Tap,” remains the quintessential mockumentary.
After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made
“Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met
Sally …” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American
classics, all of them among the most often quoted movies of the 20th
century.
A legacy on and off screen
For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on
screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant
fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock
Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including “Seinfeld”
and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the turn of the century, its success
rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it earlier this decade.
This fall, Reiner and Castle Rock released the long-in-coming sequel
“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”
All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry's most passionate
Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for
liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal
Rights, which challenged in court California's ban on same-sex marriage,
Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California
initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on
tobacco products. Reiner was also a critic of President Donald Trump.
That ran in the family, too. Reiner's father opposed the Communist hunt
of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and
actor, protested the Vietnam War.
“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner told the Guardian in
2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will
close just as fast as it opened.”
‘All in the Family’ to ‘Stand By Me’
Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a young man, he
quickly set out to follow his father into entertainment. He studied at
the University of California, Los Angeles film school and, in the 1960s,
began appearing in small parts in various television shows.
But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in “All in the Family,” it
came as a surprise to the elder Reiner.
“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I
think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits
quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was
anyway,” Reiner told “60 Minutes.”
On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll
O’Connor's bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was five times
nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show, winning in 1974
and 1978. In Lear, Reiner also found a mentor. He called him “a second
father.”
[to top of second column]
|
Carl Reiner, left, and his son Rob Reiner pose together following
their hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre, April
7, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
 “It wasn’t just that he hired me for
‘All in the Family,’” Reiner told “American Masters” in 2005. “It
was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to
be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good
fortune, to help make some change.”
Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He
put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance “Stand By Me,”
Reiner's adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The
movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing
boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young
cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of
King.
With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William
Goldman's 1973's “The Princess Bride,” a book Reiner had loved since
his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from François
Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman's book,
but it ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman's own script) to
capture the unique comic tone of “The Princess Bride.” But only once
he had Goldman's blessing.
“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want
this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I've ever written in
my life. What are you going to do with it?'” Reiner recalled in a
Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started
going through what I thought should be done with the film.”
Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie — starring Cary
Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin
Wright — would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless
impressions of Inigo Montoya's vow of revenge and the risky nature
of land wars in Asia.
'When Harry Met Sally ...”
Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for
10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom
fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” but found a more lasting legacy
behind the camera.
After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested
a comedy about dating. In writing what became “When Harry Met Sally
…” Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a
woman (played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) over the
course of 12 years.
Along the way, the movie's ending changed, as did some of the film’s
indelible moments. The famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having,”
said after witnessing Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Delicatessen, was
a suggestion by Crystal — delivered by none other than Reiner’s
mother, Estelle.
The movie’s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met
Singer, a photographer, on the set of “When Harry Met Sally …” In
1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake
and Romy.
Reiner’s subsequent films included another King adaptation, “Misery”
(1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military
courtroom tale “A Few Good Men” (1992) and 1995’s “The American
President.”
By the late ’90s, Reiner’s films (1996’s “Ghosts of Mississippi,”
2007’s “The Bucket List”) no longer had the same success rate. But
he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like
“Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013).
In 2023, he directed the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My
Life.”
In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested
everything in his career boiled down to one thing.
“All I’ve ever done is say, ‘Is this something that is an extension
of me?’ For ‘Stand by Me,’ I didn’t know if it was going to be
successful or not. All I thought was, ‘I like this because I know
what it feels like.’”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
