\n In May 1981, a 26-year-old photographer named Michele Singer took a meeting with Jerry Bowles, then editor of a business magazine in New York.\n <\/p>\n
\n She had worked her way up from being a photographer\u2019s assistant \u2014 a grungy gig that involved a lot of carrying heavy equipment and running errands \u2014 and was looking for more commercial jobs. Her portfolio highlighted her talent in design and composition, and impressed him.\n <\/p>\n
\n Having been educated at a bilingual French school on the Upper East Side, she spoke the language fluently, as well as Spanish, which she had learned on her own. She was well-read, a graduate<\/a> of the School of Visual Arts. And she was generous, something that came through when Michele pulled out the portfolio of another photographer during her meeting with Bowles. The person was a friend, and she wanted him to see their work, too.\n <\/p>\n \n Bowles had met with hundreds of photographers, and he\u2019d never seen someone do that before.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe was the first person to be that generous,\u201d Bowles, now 82, told celebrity.land.\n <\/p>\n \n But the thing that struck him most, he said, \u201cwas she seemed like a young person who had a great sense of who she was and what she wanted to be.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI knew somebody this beautiful, this smart, this clever was going to do well.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n An air of wisdom and authority beyond her years made Michele well suited to deal with photo subjects from the corporate world like real estate tycoon Samuel Jayson LeFrak and then-future president Donald Trump, whose portrait she shot for the cover of his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere was nobody I had ever worked with who did better portraits,\u201d Bowles said, not even \u201cguys who were giants in those days.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Of course, Michele Singer, later Reiner, ultimately became a giant herself \u2014 a powerful activist, a devoted mother and, with her husband Rob Reiner, part of a Hollywood couple who so much of the country is mourning after their tragic deaths last weekend.\n <\/p>\n \n Their son Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.\n <\/p>\n \n Before that tragic night, when a family was plunged into a horrifying nightmare, Michele Reiner built a life based on service, love and devotion to a better world.\n <\/p>\n \n Michele Reiner was, in her husband\u2019s words, \u201can irate citizen.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere\u2019s just too much injustice in the world, and she wants to fix it all,\u201d Rob Reiner said on Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue\u2019s podcast<\/a> in 2022.\n <\/p>\n \n The Hollywood couple\u2019s names often appeared side-by-side in press releases for their efforts in early childhood education, marriage equality, the arts and environmental conservation, to name a few. But Rob Reiner wanted everyone to know that Michele Reiner, his wife of more than three decades, was the driving force.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe basically stands behind me and kicks me in the ass all the time \u2014 \u2018Why don\u2019t you do something? You\u2019re a celebrity. You can talk! Get out there and do something,\u2019\u201d the celebrated director said, earning laughs while accepting<\/a> a Lifetime Achievement award in 2011 from GLSEN, an LGBTQ nonprofit. \u201cSo, I listen to what she says.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Michele Reiner stood next to him, smiling, until he told the crowd she was \u201cpetrified\u201d to be on stage because \u201cthis is not what she does.\u201d That earned him an eye roll. Hers were famous, according to Kris Perry, a former executive director of First 5, an early childhood education program made possible by the Reiners\u2019 support of a proposition that created a cigarette tax to fund support for families with children ages 0-5.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou could just see behind the scenes that she very much had an idea of what they should be doing and very much was encouraging him \u2014 or pushing him \u2014 to go a little further, do a little bit more,\u201d said Perry. \u201cAnd at the same time, she had her own point of view. She had her own passions.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Perry knew Rob Reiner for years before he finally met Michele, and remembers leaving their first meeting thinking, \u201c\u2018Oh, wow, he\u2019s very lucky.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Perry later became one of the lead plaintiffs in the case that got Prop. 8, California\u2019s proposed ban on marriage equality, overturned. The Reiners became deeply involved in the cause, often sitting in the front row during hearings.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey\u2019d just be on the edge of their seat,\u201d Perry said. \u201cIf the other side said something not great, like a completely bigoted comment, she almost couldn\u2019t not make an outward gasp or comment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe would be aghast, like, \u2018How could you say something so stupid?\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The day of the ruling, Michele Reiner waited outside the door with others, a moment captured by legendary D.C. photographer Diana Walker. She has her ear leaned against the door and an almost hopeful smile on her face.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe all felt so supported and validated by them and helped by them,\u201d Perry said. \u201cWhat they were able to do to help us become a married couple while our kids were still growing up was profoundly important to them and to us and to so many other couples that were in the same situation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Michele Reiner\u2019s strength was inherited.\n <\/p>\n \n When her mother Nicole Bernheim Silberkleit was 17, she and ten relatives were taken to the Drancy internment camp outside Paris and then, a week later, were loaded into cattle cars to Poland, she recounted in a 2001 news article. Bernheim Silberkleit was the only person in her family to leave Auschwitz alive, her brother and parents among those who died.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMy mother is the most incredible person,\u201d Michele Reiner said in an emotional testimony captured<\/a> by USC\u2019s Shoah Foundation in 1994. \u201cShe\u2019s very strong.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Michele Reiner and her family traveled to Strasbourg in northeastern France in 2023 to unveil four concrete blocks outside her mother\u2019s family\u2019s last home as part of the Stolpersteine project to commemorate victims of Nazi atrocities.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt was powerful to have my whole family there to remember this moment,\u201d Michele wrote on Instagram, a somber post amid many photos of her kids \u2014 Jake, Nick and Romy.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs my son Jake said, \u2018Her will to live is the reason I\u2019m alive.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Michele\u2019s sisters \u2014 Suzanne and Martine \u2014 were also there.\n <\/p>\n \n Suzanne Singer is a rabbi but previously had a career working in public television, into which she channeled her passion for social justice. Martine Singer is the head of a nonprofit that advocates for kids and families in underserved communities. Public service runs in the family\u2019s veins.\n <\/p>\n![\"Michele](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/gettyimages-451426728.jpg?c=original&q=w_860,c_fill\")
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