Courtesy of JTA. Photo credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
Rob Reiner attends the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival at the Beacon Theatre on April 27, 2019 in New York City
(JTA) — Rob Reiner, the beloved Jewish film director, actor and liberal activist, was found dead in his Brentwood, California, home with his wife, the producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, late on Dec. 15, both with multiple stab wounds.
The deaths of Rob, 78, and Michele, 70, whose work brought lighthearted comedies and weighty dramas with some Jewish sensibilities to the mainstream, has shocked Hollywood.
The pair’s 32-year-old son Nick has been arrested in connection to the homicide investigation. The Reiners were reportedly found by their daughter Romy.
Rob and Nick Reiner had partnered a decade ago to make the autobiographical drama “Being Charlie,” inspired by Nick’s longtime struggles with drug addiction. Nick co-scripted the film, which follows the troubled son of a famous actor in and out of rehab as his dad prepares a run for governor.
Rob Reiner himself was a vocal Democratic Party activist and flirted with running for public office; though he never did, he was a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump.
Reiner’s profile as a Hollywood liberal was in part stoked by his most formative role, as a star of the sitcom “All in the Family” as a young liberal foil to Archie Bunker.
After leaving the show, Reiner struck out on his own as a director and screenwriter. His vast filmography encompasses some of the most generation-defining movies of the 1980s and 1990s, including “When Harry Met Sally…,” “This is Spinal Tap,” “The Princess Bride,” “Misery,” “The Sure Thing,” “Stand By Me” and “A Few Good Men.”
The son of Carl Reiner, a legendary Jewish comedian and director in his own right, and actor and singer Estelle Reiner, Rob Reiner grew up on the sets of TV comedies like “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Rob had a bar mitzvah, but the family was not observantly Jewish, with Carl declaring he had become an atheist after the Holocaust. Rob himself would also identify as an atheist throughout his life.
His big break came when he was cast as Michael “Meathead” Stivic, the left-wing Polish-American son-in-law of Irish-American bigot Archie Bunker, on “All in the Family” in 1971. While the character was not Jewish, under the guidance of the show’s button-pushing Jewish creator Norman Lear, Reiner still embodied the emerging spirit of American Jewish liberalism in his endless sparring matches with Carroll O’Connor’s Bunker.
Reiner left the show in 1978, striking out as a writer and director of films while continuing to appear in front of the camera. Some, like the mostly improvised rock-band mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” and family fantasy comedy “The Princess Bride,” were not immediate hits but became widely beloved cult classics over time, spawning some of the most-quoted lines in cinema history. “A Few Good Men,” his 1993 military drama starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, was nominated for best picture at the Oscars.
Of particular note was “When Harry Met Sally…,” Reiner’s 1989 romantic comedy (scripted by equally beloved Jewish writer Nora Ephron) starring Jewish actor Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as lifelong friends navigating a mutual attraction. Rob met Michele, a photographer and his future second wife, on the set when she happened to be walking past. Their mutual attraction inspired him to change the movie’s ending, allowing Crystal and Ryan’s characters to get together; Michele would later work with Rob, producing some of his films.
Among Rob Reiner’s final films were a documentary about his Jewish comedian friend Albert Brooks and another documentary about the rise of Christian nationalism.
“My aunt was in Auschwitz, she survived. My wife’s mother survived Auschwitz but her entire family was killed at Auschwitz, and I visited recently there,” Reiner told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the film. “I’m very well aware of what can happen when an autocrat takes over a country.”
