Hollywood is mourning Rob and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, who were found dead in their home on Dec. 14.
Rob Reiner achieved fame in Hollywood as an actor, starring as Michael “Meathead” Stivic on Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family from 1971 to 1978. Although Reiner appeared occasionally in TV and film — including appearances on the comedy New Girl from 2012 to 2018 — he ultimately became known as a prolific director. He made his directorial debut with the rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, later returning to the faux band in 2025 with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. This sequel would be his final movie.
Although Reiner started out in comedy, the director has worked in different genres and tones, bringing Stephen King’s tense thriller, Misery, to the big screen as well as Aaron Sorkin’s legal drama A Few Good Men. But he’s perhaps best known for films that wear their heart on their sleeve, like the romantic adventure The Princess Bride and quintessential rom-com When Harry Met Sally, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan.
Below are some of Reiner’s most beloved films.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Christopher Guest in “This is Spinal Tap” – 1984. (Embassy Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
This Is Spinal Tap follows a heavy metal rock group — made up of members played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer — as they tour the United States. Reiner played Marty DiBergi, the director making the documentary.
In July, Reiner spoke to Page Six about the struggle to make his first film. “We went around with this 20-minute demo reel that we had and nobody wanted it,” he recalled. “Everybody passed on it. Nobody understood it.”
Ultimately, funding for the film came from All in the Family creator Lear, who Reiner said “took a big leap of faith.”
“He was my champion my whole career,” Reiner said.
Stand by Me (1986)
From left, Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell in “Stand By Me.” (Columbia Pictures/Courtesy: Everett Collection)
Stand By Me marked a shifting of gears for director Reiner, who followed up This Is Spinal Tap with the 1985 romantic comedy The Sure Thing. Reiner adapted Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body, a coming-of-age drama about a group of 12-year-old boys who search for the body of a missing boy. It starred River Phoenix as well as Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell.
Reiner told Variety in 2016 that the film was “the first time that I did anything that was closely connected to my own personality. It had some melancholy in it and also had some humor in it. It was more reflective, and I thought, if people don’t like this, they’re not going to like what I like to do.”
In an interview with Piers Morgan in September, Reiner said of Stand By Me, “People have their favorites, the cliché [is], we love all our children, even the bad ones. … I always say, Stand By Me, to me, is the one that meant the most to me.”
The Princess Bride (1987)
Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn in “The Princess Bride.” (20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection)
The Princess Bride, an adaptation of William Goldman’s novel of the same name, tells the love story of farmhand-turned-pirate Westley (Cary Elwes) and Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright). Along the way, the two encounter characters such as the vengeful Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) and the giant Fezzik (André the Giant). The film is framed by a grandfather (Peter Falk) reading a story to his sick grandson (Fred Savage).
“I mean, it’s an oddball movie, when you think about it. It’s got romance, it’s got swashbuckling, it’s got satire,” Reiner said at the “Directors on Directing” panel with Paul Feig at San Diego Comic-Con in 2025, according to Gold Derby. “The same movie that has these great sword fights has a guy saying, ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia.’ It’s a very weird, odd mix of things.”
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally.” (Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Can men and women really be friends? It’s the question posed in When Harry Met Sally, which starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as two opposite-minded people who form an unlikely friendship that grows into something more — if only they could get out of their own way. Toward the end of the film, Harry makes a grand romantic gesture on New Year’s Eve, winning Sally’s heart. The movie closes with the reveal that the two are happily married.
Nora Ephron wrote the script, which originally concluded with Crystal and Ryan’s characters parting ways after an awkward one-night stand. At the time, Reiner had been divorced from fellow director Penny Marshall for 10 years, which he said inspired that less-than-romantic ending.
“Because I had been married for 10 years, I’d been single for 10 years and I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to be with anybody,” he told CNN’s Chris Wallace in 2024, “and that gave birth to When Harry Met Sally.”
However, Harry and Sally’s happy ending came after Reiner met his wife, Michele, who had visited the set at the time of filming. “I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending,” Reiner said.
Misery (1990)
Kathy Bates and James Caan in “Misery.” (Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Reiner followed up When Harry Met Sally with dark story of love and obsession. Misery, an adaptation of King’s 1987 novel, centers on writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan), who gets injured in a car accident and is cared for by his biggest fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). Except Annie’s not exactly the good nurse she appears to be, and it soon becomes clear that she has no interest in letting Paul ever leave her home.
Bates, a stage actress at the time and relatively unknown to film audiences when she was cast, won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1991.
“She read one line,” Reiner told Yahoo in 2018 of the process of casting Bates. “She had a whole scene prepared, and after the first line, I said, ‘You don’t have to read, I know you’re great. You have the part.’”
A Few Good Men (1992)
Kevin Pollak, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore in “A Few Good Men.” (Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Reiner teamed up with then-playwright Aaron Sorkin for A Few Good Men, a legal drama about the death of a soldier at a naval base. The film starred Tom Cruise, Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon. It also created one of the most iconic film speeches of all time, when Col. Nathan Jessup (Nicholson) testifies and screams: “You can’t handle the truth!”
The film examined ideas of honor, loyalty and obedience within the U.S. military.
“Where do you draw the line between being loyal and following orders, and acting on your own when something is immoral or illegal,” Reiner told the New York Times in 1992 of the film. “It’s the same moral dilemma the Nazis dealt with at Nuremberg, or Calley at My Lai. And it doesn’t just apply to the military. We all live in corporate or business cultures. We’re all subordinate to somebody else. We all have to make decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Reiner worked with Sorkin again in the 1995 film The American President.
Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
Alec Baldwin in “Ghosts of Mississippi.” (Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Reiner returned to courtroom drama with Ghosts of Mississippi, about the 1994 trial of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith (played by James Woods), who was accused of the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Whoopi Goldberg portrayed Myrlie Evers, Evers’s widow, who sought justice for her husband’s assassination, and Alec Baldwin, played attorney Bobby DeLaughter, who takes on Evers’s case. Woods received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role.
The Bucket List (2007)
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in “The Bucket List.” (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
After the 2005 romantic comedy Rumor Has It, Reiner reteamed with A Few Good Men’s Nicholson for buddy comedy The Bucket List. The film starred Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as terminally ill friends who decide to make a list of everything they want to do before they “kick the bucket.” The film did much to popularize the phrase “bucket list.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Reiner said that he wanted to direct Justin Zackham’s script within the first 10 pages of reading it.
“I like to think of myself as a very young old person,” said Reiner, who was then 62. “But you start thinking, ‘How many years am I going to have to be productive?’ Especially in our business, youth is so stressed. You start thinking, ‘How many more movies am I going to get to make?’ Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll make five more.”
Reiner directed eight more films after The Bucket List.
LBJ (2016)
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Woody Harrelson and Kim Allen in “LBJ.” (Electric Entertainment/Everett Collection)
Reiner’s political drama followed Woody Harrelson as Lyndon Johnson, focusing on his work following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The film was written by Your Honor showrunner Joey Hartstone, whose script made the 2014 Blacklist, an annual roster of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.
In a 2016 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Reiner said that the film “set about trying to make him human and show all sides of him,” praising Harrelson for his “off the charts” performance.
Reiner teamed up with screenwriter Hartstone again in 2017 for the film Shock and Awe, about a group of journalists searching for answers about the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023)
Albert Brooks and Rob Reiner in “Albert Brooks : Defending My Life.” (HBO)
Reiner paid tribute to his best friend, comedian and screenwriter Albert Brooks, with this HBO Max documentary. The film, which is framed by an on-screen conversation with Reiner and Brooks, chronicles Brooks’s life, and features commentary from fellow comedians and entertainers.
“I wanted to do this for years. When the film My Dinner With Andre came out, I said, ‘Albert, come on, we’ll go to a deli and it’ll be My Lunch With Albert.’ He never wanted to do it,” Reiner told the Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “Time went by, and finally we both thought it could be more than the two of us talking. It would also go into his career, because to me, Albert is a genius. So many young people don’t know him, and I wanted everybody to be able to see what I’ve seen for 60 years now.”