{"id":2200842,"date":"2025-12-16T04:58:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2200842"},"modified":"2025-12-16T04:58:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:58:49","slug":"beloved-filmmaker-rob-reiner-dies-at-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/beloved-filmmaker-rob-reiner-dies-at-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Beloved Filmmaker Rob Reiner Dies at 78"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just that he hired me for All in the Family,<\/i>\u201d Reiner told American Masters<\/i> in 2005. \u201cIt was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance Stand By Me<\/i>, Reiner\u2019s adaptation of King’s novella The Body.<\/i> The movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of King.<\/p>\n

With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman\u2019s The Princess Bride<\/i>, a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut to Robert Redford<\/a> had considered adapting Goldman\u2019s book, but it ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman\u2019s own script) to capture the unique comic tone of The Princess Bride<\/i>. But only once he had Goldman\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the door he greeted me and he said, \u2018This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I\u2019ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?\u2019\u201d Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. \u201cAnd we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie \u2014 starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Andr\u00e9 the Giant and Robin Wright \u2014 would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya\u2019s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia.<\/p>\n

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Reiner, center, with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, the stars of 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally …” The romantic comedy remains one of Reiner’s most popular movies.<\/p>\n

Columbia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Reiner\u2019s films earned 11 Oscar nominations. Additionally, he won an AARP Movies for Grownups Best Intergenerational Film award in 2011<\/a> for Flipped<\/i>, as well as a 2008 Movies for Grownups award<\/a> for Best Buddy Picture for\u00a0The Bucket List<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u2018When Harry Met Sally …\u2019<\/h3>\n

Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with Laverne & Shirley<\/i>, but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera.<\/p>\n

After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested a comedy about dating. In writing what became When Harry Met Sally \u2026,<\/i> Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman (played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, named by AARP as one of the best on-screen movie couples of all time<\/a>) over the course of 12 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cNora Ephron\u00a0was the prototype for Sally, and I was the prototype for Harry,\u201d Reiner told AARP in 2014<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along the way, the movie\u2019s ending changed, as did some of the film\u2019s indelible moments. The famous line, \u201cI\u2019ll have what she\u2019s having,\u201d said after witnessing Ryan\u2019s fake orgasm at Katz\u2019s Delicatessen, was a suggestion by Crystal \u2014 delivered by none other than Reiner\u2019s mother, Estelle.<\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met Singer, a photographer, on the set of When Harry Met Sally \u2026<\/i> In 1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake and Romy.<\/p>\n

Reiner\u2019s subsequent films included another King adaptation, Misery<\/i> (1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military courtroom tale A Few Good Men<\/i> (1992) and 1995\u2019s The American President<\/i>.<\/p>\n

By the late \u201990s, Reiner\u2019s films (1996\u2019s Ghosts of Mississippi,<\/i> 2007\u2019s The Bucket List<\/i>) no longer had the same success rate. But he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like Sleepless in Seattle<\/i> (1993) and The Wolf of Wall Street<\/i> (2013). In 2023, he directed the documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I\u2019ve ever done is say, \u2018Is this something that is an extension of me?\u2019 For Stand by Me<\/i>, I didn\u2019t know if it was going to be successful or not. All I thought was, \u2018I like this because I know what it feels like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aarp.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just that he hired me for All in the Family,\u201d Reiner told American Masters in 2005. \u201cIt was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.\u201d Lear also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2200843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[359403,424547,424548,424894],"class_list":["post-2200842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-rob-reiner","tag-rob-reiner-dead","tag-rob-reiner-death","tag-rob-reiner-obit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Beloved-Filmmaker-Rob-Reiner-Dies-at-78.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2200842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200844,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200842\/revisions\/2200844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2200842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2200842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2200842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}