How Rob Reiner changed movies forever by challenging himself as an artist

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By Sandra Gonzalez, TuAnh Dam, Danya Gainor, CNN

(CNN) — Robert Reiner, the celebrated actor, director and producer, was found dead with his wife Michele at their home in Los Angeles on Sunday, a spokesperson for the Reiner family said. He was 78.

Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department were investigating an apparent homicide. “We’re going to try to speak to every family member that we can to get to the facts of this investigation,” LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said. Investigators were interviewing a family member Sunday evening regarding the deaths, a law enforcement source told CNN.

“He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist,” Kathy Bates said in a statement through a representative.

Reiner came to stardom playing the son-in-law of Archie and Edith Bunker on the 1970s hit show “All in the Family” before going on to create a truly diverse body of incredibly successful work, including classics like “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” and “The Princess Bride.” He cemented his status as a leading director with “When Harry Met Sally…”, “Misery,” and “A Few Good Men,” which earned four Oscar nominations.

Reiner was born in 1947 in The Bronx, New York, to Estelle and Carl Reiner, the writer, actor, director and producer whose many decades’ worth of credits included “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The 2000 Year Old Man.”

Reiner said he found it a challenge to step out of his father’s shadow.

“I didn’t feel the pressure from my father, I felt the pressure internally because my father had achieved at such a high level that I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to break through,’” he told The Atlantic in 2017.

He did. Reiner earned two Emmy Awards for his role on “All in the Family” playing Mike Stivic, who would get into arguments with his conservative father-in-law on the groundbreaking show, which often explored political and social issues through comedy.

‘This Is Spinal Tap’

Though Reiner continued to act – he had a part on season 4 of FX’s “The Bear” earlier this year – he moved behind the camera in the 1980s, making his directorial debut with “This Is Spinal Tap,” the musical comedy that more or less invented the mockumentary. “It pioneered a new narrative format,” Reiner wrote in a history of the movie published earlier this year.

“Spinal Tap” also did something more important, he noted: it “transformed the way people talk and think about the music industry.”

After years of development, a sequel to the film – “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” – was released in September, 2025.

‘The Princess Bride’

Reiner exhibited extraordinary range. He followed his first film with an adaptation of Stephen King’s coming-of-age story “Stand by Me” and then directed cult comedy “The Princess Bride.”

“When it came time for the movie’s release, no one had any idea of how to sell it,” Reiner wrote, in the introduction to the Cary Elwes and Joe Layden book about the making of “The Princess Bride.” What even was it – “a fairy tale? Was it a swashbuckling adventure? Was it a love story? Or was it just a nutty satire? The fact is it was, and is, all of the above. Not easy to capture in a two-minute preview trailer or a thirty-second TV ad.”

Despite those studio misgivings and an early weak theater audience, the movie became wildly famous as a beloved movie that defied all these forms.

‘When Harry Met Sally…’

Two years later, he entered into film history a beloved romantic comedy that still stands as a masterclass in chemistry and capturing the culture, “When Harry Met Sally…”

“The screenplay has my name on it, but it was very much a collaboration,” Nora Ephron wrote in an introduction to a book version of that film’s script. “Rob” – who was a very divorced man at the time – “said he had an idea – he wanted to make a movie about a man and a woman who become friends, as opposed to lovers; they make a deliberate decision not to have sex because sex ruins everything; and then they have sex and it ruins everything.”

In the process of taking that story to life, they became friends themselves. “Rob is a very strange person,” Ephron wrote. “He is extremely funny, but he is also extremely depressed – or at least he was at the time; he talked constantly about how depressed he was.” He put that darkness and that light into the script itself, and so did Ephron: “I began with a Harry, based on Rob.” Nearly four years from their first meeting, during which Reiner made “The Princess Bride,” they began to shoot a film.

The magic of “When Harry Met Sally…” came, Ephron said, from the fact that she owned Sally and Reiner owned Harry. As they wrote and made the film, they exchanged information about the current state of single men and women with each other. Ephron told Reiner, for one thing, that women faked orgasms, a story that delighted Reiner so much that he wrote one of the most famous scenes in Hollywood history about it.

There were other historically notable things about the making of the film. At one point, a four-way telephone conversation happens. Reiner created a set so that all the participants could actually conduct the call live and react to each other. The shoot required at least 60 takes and is a prime example of the magic of moviemaking that viewers might take for granted.

The other thing notable about the film is that Reiner actually fell in love during the making. Reiner told Chris Wallace last year that he met his future wife Michele, a photographer, while making that film, which prompted him to change the ending to something more hopeful than he’d originally planned.

“It was going to be the two of them seeing each other after years, talking and then walking away from each other,” he said.

Reiner had previously been married to Penny Marshall, herself a notable actor and director.

A life in politics

Reiner followed “When Harry Met Sally…” with another King adaptation, this one a decidedly darker entry than their first collaboration. “Misery” earned Kathy Bates an Academy Award for her role as a deranged literary fan.

The 1992 drama “A Few Good Men” was not his most famous but was perhaps his most recognized film, earning four Oscar nominations, including Reiner’s first and only for best picture.

Like his “All in the Family” character, Reiner was passionate about progressive candidates and causes. He supported Democratic presidential candidates, was an advocate for free preschool education and was credited for being a key player in getting California’s gay marriage ban overturned.

“I am unbelievably proud to be part of this,” Reiner said of his work on gay marriage. “I couldn’t have imagined that I would ever be involved in anything as historically significant as this in my life.”

“Rob was a passionate advocate for children and for civil rights – from taking on Big Tobacco to fighting for marriage equality to serving as a powerful voice in early education,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his partner Jennifer Siebel in a statement.

In 2024, Reiner produced “God and Country,” a documentary focused on the rise of Christian nationalism.

“We have very prominent conservative Christian leaders speaking out against Christian nationalists because they think it undermines the teachings of Jesus,” Reiner said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta.

He later told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the United States was at the “crossroads” of democracy and autocracy. There was one way forward, he thought.

“We want people to start talking to each other,” he said.

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