Police have arrested Nick Reiner in connection with the death of his parents, director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer.
The 32-year-old, the couple’s youngest son, was detained Sunday night before being booked for felony murder Monday morning. He is being held on a $4 million bail bond, Los Angeles Sheriff’s records show.
Hollywood actor and director Reiner, 78, and his wife, who was 68, were found slain in their $13.5 million home with fatal knife wounds, including slashes to their throats, according to sources.
Nick worked as a screenwriter and co-wrote Being Charlie, a semi-autobiographical film about drug addiction and the impact it has on families, which his father directed.
He has publicly shared his years-long battle with drug addiction, which started when he was a teenager and saw him go to rehab aged 15, and the difficult relationship it fostered with Reiner.
In a 2016 interview with the BUILD series while promoting their film, Nick said that he ‘didn’t bond’ well with his father when he was younger, and that working on Being Charlie ‘made me feel closer to him.’
He said at the time of Being Charlie’s release that he hoped to stay off drugs so that he would never be homeless again: ‘When I was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it’.
His parents expressed regret at how they had dealt with their son’s addiction during a 2015 interview with the LA Times alongside Nick and their other children.
The couple met while working on the hit romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally and went on to have three children: Jake, born in 1991; Nick, born in 1993; and actress Romy, born in 1997.
Reiner, 78, also adopted another daughter, Tracy Reiner, with his ex-wife Penny Marshall.
Nick’s sisters, Tracy and Romy, followed in their father’s footsteps, going on to become actresses themselves, with Romy’s IMDb page also describing her as a producer and writer, whose credits include You People and Voices.
Jake, though, went a different path and is a news reporter in Houston, Texas.
‘I just had a different passion, the passion for news and I found it at Syracuse University,’ he told the Houston Chronicle in 2016.
‘I didn’t get into journalism to avoid being compared to my father,’ he continued. ‘Think about it, my dad followed in his dad’s footsteps.’
Reiner was born in the Bronx to Estelle and noted writer, director and comedian Carl Reiner, who was known for creating The Dick Van Dyke Show.
He soon followed in his father’s footsteps, attending the University of California Los Angeles Film School and getting some minor roles on shows like The Andy Griffith Show, The Partridge Family and Batman in the late 1960s.
The 78-year-old had gained international fame for the critically-acclaimed films he has directed over the year.
These included The Sure Thing in 1985, The Princess Bride in 1987, When Harry Met Sally in 1989, American President in 1995 and A Few Good Men in 1992, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Over the course of his career, Reiner earned four nominations for Golden Globe for Best Director and three Directors Guild of America Awards.
In more recent years, Reiner has become an activist for liberal causes.
Reiner also began his writing career alongside Steve Martin on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s, before becoming nationally known for playing Michael Stivic, Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law on All in the Family – which was the most-watched television program from 1971 through 1976.
He was chosen for the role over actors like Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford. It seemed the producers made the right call – as Reiner wound up winning two Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe nominations for his work on the show.
He also acted in films such as Sleepless in Seattle, The First Wives Club and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Soon, Reiner started working on the big screen as a writer, director and co-star in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap in 1984.
In the decade that followed, Reiner had a number of box-office hits, including Stand By Me, Misery, When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride.
By 1987, Reiner co-founded his own production company, Castle Rock Entertainment, which released several of his films, including In the Line of Fire and Malice before it was acquired by Turner Broadcasting in 1993.
But in more recent years, Reiner had only occasional hits like The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.
Still, Reiner defended his films.
‘I’m making the movies I want to make,’ he told the Guardian in 2008.
‘Studios are looking for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, and you’re not going to get it with a little movie,’ Reiner explained.
‘But I came into this business to express myself and tell stories, not just churn out a product.’
At the same time, Reiner has become more politically active as an ardent supporter of Democratic candidates and an outspoken supporter of liberal causes.
He was also a vocal critic of the President, even announcing in 2021 that he was working on a 10 to 13-episode television project covering Donald Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
