In 1989, Reiner effectively set the standard for the rom-com genre with When Harry Met Sally.
It paired Billy Crystal with Meg Ryan as two friends who fall in love, climaxing in one of Hollywood’s most iconic restaurant-based scenes.
After Ryan’s Sally fakes an orgasm to prove a point, it prompts another customer, played by Reiner’s mother Estelle, to declare: “I’ll have what she’s having!”
Sydney Sweeney recently delivered the line in a Hellmann’s Super Bowl advert, which acted as a nostalgic parody of the film.
While directing the film, Reiner was introduced to photographer Michele Singer. The meet cute influenced his decision to change the film’s ending.
He told Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, external: “We started seeing each other during [the making of] this film, and one thing led to another and, you know, I changed the ending of the movie. I didn’t figure I was ever going to be with anybody, I couldn’t figure out how to be with anybody, and I had it where Harry and Sally don’t get together. They run into each other in New York, they talk a little bit and then they walk in opposite directions.
“But I meet Michele and I said, ‘well, I see how this works’, and I changed it. I reshot the ending where you see Billy running and seeing Meg at the New Year’s Eve party.”
Reiner and Singer were soon married, going on to have three children together.
He had been married before, to actress and director Penny Marshall in 1971, adopting her daughter, actress Tracy Reiner.