Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner (born March 6, 1947, Bronx, New York, U.S.) American actor and director known especially for his role as Michael (“Meathead”) Stivic in the television series All in the Family (1971–79) and for his direction of such culturally resonant films as This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), and A Few Good Men (1992).

Early life and career

Reiner was the eldest son born to two show business professionals. His father was comic Carl Reiner, who created The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), and his mother was actress and jazz singer Estelle Reiner. Initially raised in the Bronx and New Rochelle, New York, Reiner moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1959. He attended Beverly Hills High School with fellow performers Albert Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss. During the summers he acted in summer stock productions. At 19 he directed Dreyfuss in a staging of John-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. Reiner then attended (1964–66) the University of California, Los Angeles, where he helped to found an improv group, The Session. He soon left to join The Committee, another, more-political improv group based in San Francisco.

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Reiner also began appearing in such television series as Hey, Landlord, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Beverly Hillbillies. His first silver screen appearance was in the film Enter Laughing (1967), his father’s directorial debut. He had previously acted in a stock production of the stage version, based on the elder Reiner’s memoir. After Tommy Smothers saw him perform with The Committee, he was hired as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967–68). In 1971 he married director and actress Penny Marshall. (They divorced in 1979.)

Breakout role in All in the Family

Reiner caught his big break when he was cast as Michael (“Meathead”) Stivic in the sitcom All in the Family (1971–79). The show pitted his character, a free-thinking hippie, against Carroll O’Connor, who portrayed his father-in-law, a coarse racist boor. The widely viewed show played their rivalry for laughs and used it to explore some of the most divisive issues of the day, notably the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. The role earned Reiner Emmy Awards for best supporting actor in a comedy in 1974 and 1978.

Success as a film director

Reiner turned to directing following his stint on the show, having cut his teeth on the 1974 television movie Sonny Boy. His first notable success was the faux rock-and-roll documentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984). He created the feature with the comics Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean, who starred as the members of a dissipated heavy metal band. Reiner himself played Marty DiBergi, the director of the documentary. The stars improvised much of the dialogue, and their deadpan humour established the film as a cult classic. His next outing, Stand by Me (1986), was an adaptation of a Stephen King story. A rousing bildungsroman about a group of adolescents who search for a dead body, the film became a sentimental favourite and helped to establish several of its young actors, among them River Phoenix and Kiefer Sutherland, as stars. In 1987 Reiner cofounded Castle Rock Entertainment, a studio that produced many of his ensuing films. (It was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., in 1993 and, following its 1996 sale to Time Warner, became part of Warner Brothers.)

Reiner’s next directorial success was The Princess Bride (1987), based on a novel by William Goldman. A wry fantasy that mocked many of the tropes it employed, the film tossed a cast that included Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, and Billy Crystal into a world of adventure, romance, and arch, satirical exchanges. Reiner’s romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally… (1989), which paired Crystal and Meg Ryan as a set of platonic friends who fall in love, was credited with establishing the standard for the genre. He turned to darker material with Misery (1990), an adaptation of a King novel that starred Kathy Bates as a woman who imprisons a writer (James Caan) whose work she adores. Bates’s frenzied but humane turn as the crazed Annie Wilkes earned her an Academy Award for best actress. The courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992) depicted the court martial of two marines for the death of a fellow soldier. It featured some of the leading lights of Hollywood at the time, including Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, and Jack Nicholson, who, as a colonel giving testimony, memorably roared, “You can’t handle the truth!” The film received an Oscar nomination for best picture.

Later films

Reiner’s next movie, North (1994), about a boy (Elijah Wood) who decides to go in search of a new set of parents, was, however, widely derided by critics as insipid and offensive. Though The American President (1995), about a romance between a widowed president (Michael Douglas) and a lobbyist (Annette Bening), and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), about the 1994 trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the assassin of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, were relatively warmly received, Reiner’s output at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st became more uneven. The romantic comedies The Story of Us (1999), Alex & Emma (2003), and Rumor Has It… (2005) were commercial and critical disappointments.

Reiner’s fortunes revived somewhat with the comedy The Bucket List (2007), about two terminally ill men who embark upon a quest to fulfill their life’s wishes before they die. Though the movie was not necessarily a critical darling, the pairing of cinema favourites Morgan Freeman and Nicholson appealed to audiences, and the film did well at the box office. Flipped (2010), a teenage romance, failed to find an audience, and The Magic of Belle Isle (2012), while remarked for the skill of Freeman’s performance as an alcoholic writer, did not reach a large viewership. Reiner’s next effort, And So It Goes (2014), a romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas, was drubbed by commentators and failed at the box office. The partially autobiographical Being Charlie (2015), cowritten by Reiner’s son Nick, probes the painful relationship between a young man struggling with substance abuse and his politician father. The film, which featured Elwes as the father, was commended for its honest portrayal of addiction. Reiner later turned to political topics with LBJ (2016), a biopic about Lyndon B. Johnson’s rise to the U.S. presidency, and Shock and Awe (2017), about a group of reporters covering the impending invasion of Iraq in 2003. He also played the journalists’ boss in the latter film.

Additional acting roles

Reiner continued to make occasional appearances in film, notably as a television network executive in the prescient reality television satire Edtv (1999) and as the father of wastrel Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). He also appeared on television. From 2012 to 2018 he portrayed the father of Zooey Deschanel’s character on the sitcom New Girl. He also played versions of his charmingly avuncular self on such TV shows as Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, 30 Rock, and Happyish. In the miniseries Hollywood (2020), Reiner was cast as a movie studio executive.

Political causes

Reiner was involved in a variety of liberal political causes. He actively campaigned for early childhood education and health care, directing the television documentary I Am Your Child (1997) and successfully advocating for funding that was derived from a tobacco tax in California (1998). From 1999 to 2006 he directed the state agency responsible for disbursing the funds. Reiner also campaigned for gay rights, notably joining with the American Foundation for Equal Rights in the successful fight to overturn Proposition 8, a piece of legislation that had made gay marriage illegal in California (2008).