Actor and director of a string of hit films including The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men
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’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 (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 in 2018, “not just to churn out a product.”
Reiner’s career in many ways echoed that of his father, Carl Reiner – 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’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 playing a comedy writer living in the suburbs with his wife (Mary Tyler Moore) and kids.
