Rob Reiner (March 6, 1947–December 14, 2025) had three notable careers: An actor, notably on the groundbreaking CBS sitcom “All in the Family,” starting in 1971; a director with a string of huge hits starting with “This is Spinal Tap” (1984) and as a producer via his Castle Rock Entertainment; and as a political activist, working tirelessly for tolerance and fairness.

He was nominated for nine Golden Globes: Five as TV supporting actor for All in the Family, and four as film director, for  Stand By Me (1986), When Harry Met Sally (1989), A Few Good Men (1992) and The American President (1995).

Reiner, the son of Carl and Estelle Reiner, played small roles in various TV series, and became a writing partner of Steve Martin for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. he landed the role of Mike  “Meathead” Stivic in “All in the Family,” constantly sparring with his father-in-law Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) in the cutting-edge series that remained the top-rated show for five consecutive years. Reiner remarked, “I could win the Nobel Prize and they’d write ‘Meathead  wins the Nobel Prize’.”

He made his directorial film debut with the heavy metal mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984). He then directed a string of bigscreen hits, also including The Sure Thing (1985), The Princess Bride (1987) and Misery (1990).

Subsequent films he directed include the racial-themed courtroom drama Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), and the Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman comedy The Bucket List (2007). His final film as director, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025), was released three months before his death. 

Three of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry: Princess Bride, Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally.

Castle Rock Entertainment — founded in 1987 by Reiner, Martin Shafer, Andrew Scheinman, Glenn Padnick and Alan Horn — has an impressive list of credits, including the sitcom Seinfeld and films such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

As an activist, he was a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which initiated a court challenge against California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages in the state.

In 1998, Reiner chaired the campaign to pass Proposition 10, the California Children & Families Initiative, which created First 5 California, a program of early childhood development services funded by a tax on tobacco products. He served as the organization’s first chairman from 1999 to 2006. 

Reiner was a member of the Social Responsibility Task Force, an organization advocating moderation where social issues such as violence and tobacco use intersect with the entertainment industry. He was also active in environmental causes, successfully leading the effort to preserve California’s Ahmanson Ranch as a state park and wildlife refuge rather than as a commercial real estate development. That was just a fraction of his nonstop activism.