Do we like Rob Reiner?
Our score: 9 out of 10. Decades of using his fame for LGBTQ+ equality, children and the planet, with no harmful words or acts found.
Rob Reiner was born in New York in 1947, the son of comedy giant Carl Reiner, and grew up in Los Angeles. He first became a household name as Mike “Meathead” Stivic on All in the Family, which won him two Emmys. He later said he took no money from his father while building his own career.
Then he turned director and went on a run most filmmakers would sell a kidney for: This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men. He founded Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987 as an independent production house. His last film as director was the 2025 Spinal Tap sequel.
The harm check comes up clean, and then some. He co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which funded the first federal court challenge to California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, and the Human Rights Campaign honoured him and his wife for it in 2015. In a late interview he said he was trying to push back against the Trump administration and preserve democracy.
On the planet and kids, he campaigned in the early 2000s to turn Ahmanson Ranch into a state park and wildlife preserve rather than a housing development. In 1998 he led the California ballot measure that taxed tobacco to fund early childhood programs, then chaired the resulting First 5 commission from 1999 to 2006. It took up about as much of his time as his movies did.
Everyone has a stoush somewhere, and his was a business one. Reiner and his Spinal Tap cast mates accused the film's owners, Vivendi and StudioCanal, of fraud over money allegedly withheld from the creators, with the claimed damages hitting $400 million. They settled in 2020 on undisclosed terms, so he was on the side of the people who say they were shortchanged.
His 2006 ballot push to tax the richest Californians to fund pre-K for four-year-olds was rejected by voters. That is a loss, not a stain, and it shows the pattern: he kept coming back for the same causes, as a Democratic fundraiser and campaigner who backed Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.