Rob Reiner, the director of beloved films including When Harry Met Sally, Misery, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, has died aged 78 in an apparent homicide, along with his 68-year-old wife Michele Singer Reiner.

Reports first began to emerge on Sunday afternoon that the bodies of a 78-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman had been found by authorities inside a home owned by Reiner in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

A spokesperson for the Reiner family confirmed their deaths on Sunday evening.

“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,” the family spokesperson said in a statement to media. “We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.”

Both TMZ and People reported that the two had suffered wounds consistent with a knife attack. Details about the cause of death have not been officially disclosed yet, but Los Angeles Police Department detectives from the robbery homicide division were investigating it as an “apparent homicide”, LAPD captain Mike Bland said.

An anonymous Los Angeles Fire Department official confirmed to media that it had responded to a medical aid request on Sunday afternoon when the bodies were found.

Reiner had been married to photographer Singer Reiner since 1989. The couple met while he was directing When Harry Met Sally, which he’d made with his friend Nora Ephron after 10 years of being single; inspired by their new romance, Reiner changed the film’s original downbeat ending so that Harry and Sally ended up together.

The son of the renowned comic actor Carl Reiner and the singer Estelle Rebost, Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1947. He initially went into acting in the 1960s, landing his first big role as the countercultural Michael “Meathead” Stivic in all nine seasons of the sitcom All in the Family. He won two of five Emmy nominations for his performance, and was also nominated for five Golden Globes in the role.

Reiner made his directorial film debut in 1984 with much loved mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, which follows a dopey British heavy metal band. He followed it with a rapid run of hits including Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), which is often ranked among the best romantic comedies of all time, Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992), which was nominated for an Oscar for best picture.

Reiner was particularly proud of Stand By Me, as he felt it was the first thing he made outside of his father’s shadow. “Spinal Tap was satire, and I love satire, but that was something my father had done. And The Sure Thing was romantic comedy and he had done those. So Stand By Me was the first thing I did that was purely an extension of myself, and that meant a lot to me,” he told the Guardian in 2018.

Later films that Reiner directed included The American President (1995), The Bucket List (2007), and his final film, the 2025 sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Over his career he was nominated for four Golden Globes for best director and three Directors Guild of America awards.

He also continued to act in small parts, including in Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle as Tom Hanks’ friend, Postcards From the Edge, The First Wives Club, The Wolf of Wall Street, New Girl and The Bear. He also frequently played himself in comedies including 30 Rock, The Simpsons, Hannah Montana, The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Reiner also cofounded Castle Rock Entertainment, the production company behind hits including The Shawshank Redemption, Seinfeld, In the Line of Fire, City Slickers, Lone Star and Miss Congeniality. He would later say that it became harder to get funding for smaller films in the 2000s. “I mean, I’m making the movies I want to make, but it’s not with the same kind of support system that I had, and so it’s much more difficult,” he told the Guardian in 2018.

“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 … I came into this business to express myself and tell stories, not just churn out a product.”

Reiner was a prominent political activist and critic of US president Donald Trump. He cofounded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which initiated the court challenge that lifted the ban on same-sex marriage in California. He also spearheaded campaigns against smoking, and considered running against the then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, but decided not to for personal reasons.

ABC Los Angeles reported Reiner’s friends and peers Billy Crystal and Larry David were seen at the scene after the reports emerged.

The Reiners had three children: Jake, Nick and Romy. Rob Reiner was also the adoptive father of actor Tracy Reiner, the daughter of his first wife, the actor and director Penny Marshall who died in 2018.

Messages to Reiner’s representatives were not immediately returned.