[[link removed]]

ROB REINER OBITUARY  
[[link removed]]


 

Michael Carlson
December 15, 2025
The Guardian
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Actor and director of a string of hit films including The Princess
Bride, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men. _

Rob Reiner and Michelle , Reuters

 

Rob Reiner, who has died aged 78, was an actor, director and producer
whose career path went from playing Mike “Meathead” Stivic,
son-in-law of Archie Bunker in Norman Lear
[[link removed]]’s
television sitcom All in the Family in the 1970s, to directing a
remarkable run of hit films between This Is Spinal Tap in 1984 and A
Few Good Men in 1992 that included The Princess Bride
[[link removed]]
(1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Misery (1990).

He also co-founded the production company Castle Rock Entertainment,
which made In the Line of Fire, City Slickers and Lone Star, as well
as the Stephen King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores
Claiborne and The Green Mile, and the TV comedy Seinfeld. After
selling Castle Rock to Turner Broadcasting in 1993, Reiner undertook
more activism and made smaller movies. “I came into this business to
express myself and tell stories,” he told the Guardian
[[link removed]]
in 2018, “not just to churn out a product.”

Reiner’s career in many ways echoed that of his father, Carl Reiner
[[link removed]]
– and, like Carl, he often drew on his own life in his work. Carl
was a successful comedian and writer, a product of Sid Caesar
[[link removed]]’s
Your Show of Shows; Rob’s mother, Estelle (nee Lebost), was an actor
and jazz singer. Rob was born in the Bronx, New York, and grew up
around such people as Mel Brooks, with whom Carl made the hit comedy
record The 2,000 Year Old Man. The family moved to the affluent suburb
of New Rochelle, which provided the material for Carl to create The
Dick Van Dyke Show, with Van Dyke
[[link removed]]
playing a comedy writer living in the suburbs with his wife (Mary
Tyler Moore
[[link removed]])
and kids.

Eventually the family moved to Los Angeles, where Rob made his TV
debut with a small part in the series Manhunt when he was 14. He acted
in his high-school drama class, and at his parents’ urging
did summer theatre back east in the resorts of the Pocono mountains.
At 19 he and Larry Bishop (son of the Rat Pack comic Joey
[[link removed]])
were the opening act for the singer Carmen McRae at the Hungry I club,
San Francisco, and, inspired by the comedian Mort Sahl
[[link removed]],
were part of a satirical improv group called the Committee.

Reiner had a small part in the fabulous comedy Where’s Poppa? (1970)
and acted in numerous TV shows, including episodes of the military
comedy Gomer Pyle, USMC, playing a beatnik, and That Girl, opposite
Marlo Thomas. Meanwhile, he was writing liberal satire for The
Smothers Brothers Comedy [[link removed]]
Hour (partnered with Steve Martin).

 
In 1971 he won the part of Meathead (Lear’s All in the Family was a
US Version of the UK show Till Death Us Do Part, and the corresponding
role in the BBC version was played by Tony Booth
[[link removed]])
over Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss, his high-school best friend.
Playing the liberal punching bag for Carroll O’Connor
[[link removed]]’s
Archie, Reiner won two Emmys for best supporting actor in a comedy.

[River Phoenix, left, and Will Wheaton in Stand By Me, 1986.]
River Phoenix, left, and Will Wheaton in Stand By Me, 1986.
Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Limited/Alamy

In 1971 he married Penny Marshall
[[link removed]], who also
progressed from comedy actor to director; they had been neighbours in
the Bronx without knowing each other. He adopted Marshall’s daughter
Tracy before the couple divorced in 1981.

Reiner’s first directing job was the TV movie Sonny Boy (1974). He
left All in the Family in 1978, but made a couple of appearances in
the spin-off series Archie Bunker’s Place. Then he began working on
This Is Spinal Tap, the rock mockumentary in which he played the
director Marty DiBergi (a parodying tip of the hat to Martin
Scorsese), whose key scene about Nigel Tufnel’s amp “going up to
11 [[link removed]]” has become a
classic.

Stand By Me
[[link removed]]
(1986), an adaptation of King’s novella The Body, is arguably his
most personal work, a coming of age story that never puts a foot
wrong. Reiner’s instinct for the truth in King’s non-horror
writing began a long working relationship; King would option his work
to Reiner for $1.

Reiner appreciated great writing. Nora Ephron
[[link removed]] based much
of When Harry Met Sally on Reiner’s own difficulty dating after his
divorce. He met his second wife, the photographer Michele Singer, on
the film’s set. It was Reiner’s mother, too, who delivered the
film’s zinger line (suggested by the star Billy Crystal) after Meg
Ryan demonstrates faking an orgasm over lunch at Katz’s deli
[[link removed]]. “I’ll have what
she’s having,” Estelle says, knowingly.

 
William Goldman
[[link removed]]
adapted his own novel for The Princess Bride, which works because it
takes its fantasy tale seriously, while wrongfooting the audience’s
disbelief with comedy. Goldman also helped adapt Aaron Sorkin’s
original play into A Few Good Men, which was nominated for the best
picture Oscar and demonstrates the trademark Sorkin social liberalism
laced with respect for institutes and fetishising of the military.

After Turner’s purchase of Castle Rock (along with its distribution
arm New Line), in a deal worth hundreds of millions, Reiner’s public
profile as a liberal activist and Democratic party mover rose. He
co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights
[[link removed]], which helped to overturn California’s state ban
on gay marriage, and worked to supply more state and federal funding
of child development. At one stage, his name was floated to run
against Arnold Schwarzenegger for California’s governorship, but, he
said: “I don’t want to be an elected official, I want to get
things done.”

[1989, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...MEG RYAN Character(s): Sally Albright
Film 'WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...' (1989) Directed By ROB REINER 12 July
1989]
Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, 1989. Photograph: Columbia
Pictures/Allstar

His most popular later work was probably The Bucket List
[[link removed]] (2007), a
comedy with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; the least was North
(1994), a father/son coming of age drama. The Sorkin-scripted love
story The American President (1995) was one of many politically themed
films, which included two written by Joey Hartstone, the 2016 biopic
LBJ
[[link removed]]
and Shock and Awe (2017), detailing journalists’ struggles to report
George W Bush’s 2003 Iraq war accurately, in which Reiner played an
editor. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) dealt with bringing the killers
of the civil rights activist Medgar Evers to justice. His 2012
release, 8, filmed Dustin Lance Black’s original theatre production
built from the transcripts of the court case against the law banning
gay marriage.

Being Charlie
[[link removed]]
(2015), which Reiner and his son Nick wrote together, fictionalised
Nick’s struggles with addiction and rehab, and his parents’
reliance on expert help at the expense of mutual understanding. The
father in the script is a movie star running for political office.

Reiner had a lifelong interest in the JFK assassination, and in 2023
he released a podcast, Who Killed JFK?, co-hosted with Soledad
O’Brien, that purported to name the actual assassins, though it
served better as an introduction for many listeners to the questions
never solved by official accounts. His most recent film was the Spinal
Tap sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
[[link removed]]
(2025).

Reiner and his wife were found dead at their home in Los Angeles in
what the city’s police department described as “an apparent double
homicide”. He is survived by their children, Romy, Nick and Jake,
and by his daughter Tracy.

 Robert Norman Reiner, director, producer, screenwriter and actor,
born 6 March 1947; died 14 December 2025

===

BEING FREE FROM BILLIONAIRE AND CORPORATE OWNERSHIP MEANS THE GUARDIAN
WILL NEVER COMPROMISE OUR INDEPENDENCE – BUT IT ALSO MEANS WE RELY
ON SUPPORT FROM READERS WHO UNDERSTAND HOW ESSENTIAL IT IS TO HAVE
NEWS SOURCES THAT ARE IMMUNE TO INTIMIDATION FROM THE POWERFUL. WE
KNOW OUR REQUESTS FOR SUPPORT ARE NOT AS WELCOME AS OUR REPORTING, BUT
WITHOUT THEM, IT’S SIMPLE: OUR REPORTING WOULDN’T EXIST. OF
COURSE, WE UNDERSTAND THAT SOME READERS ARE NOT IN A POSITION TO
SUPPORT US, AND IF THAT IS YOU, WE VALUE YOUR READERSHIP NO LESS.

BUT IF YOU ARE ABLE, PLEASE SUPPORT US TODAY. 

===

 

 

* Rob Reiner Obituary; California; Movies;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]