Troubled actor and filmmaker Nick Reiner has been arrested and is being held on four million dollars bail on the heels of the brutal murders Sunday of the suspect’s father, activist and film director Rob Reiner, and the director’s wife, Michele Singer.
Nick Reiner has led a very troubled life that included bouts with drug addiction; more than a dozen stints in rehab; several years of homelessness; estrangement, then reunification with his family; and other serious mental health issues over which the whole family publicly struggled.
By Nick’s own admission, his struggles with addiction started when he was a teenager. The 32-year-old openly admitted this in 2016 during interviews for the semi-biographical film he made with his famed father’s assistance. The film, Being Charlie, followed the escapades of a young man who was in and out of rehab and is given an intervention by his parents.
Along with his addiction to drugs, Nick also had bouts of homelessness. He admitted that he was often homeless because he refused to heed the advice he was offered in rehab.
“If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” Nick said. “Now, I’ve been home for a really long time. But there was a lot of dark years there,” he told People magazine in 2016.
“I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” he said. “I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
“When I was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it,” he added .
For his part, Rob Reiner claimed at the time that he and his family unwittingly contributed to Nick’s mental issues.
“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. We were desperate and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
“It was very, very hard going through it the first time, with these painful and difficult highs and lows,” the This is Spinal Tap director said at the time. “And then making the movie dredged it all up again.”
In 2016, NPR asked Nick if he would like to work with his famous director father again. His reply is chilling in retrospect. “I think for now, it’s best for me at least to be sort of independent,” Nick replied.
One of the last times that Nick and his father were seen in public could also have been a warning sign. On Saturday, hours before the When Harry Met Sally director was found murdered, he was seen in a heated argument with Nick at comedian Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party, TMZ reported.
Friends of the Reiners have also said that Michele had been anguishing over Nick’s return to substance abuse and was lamenting her powerlessness over what to do in response to the young man’s recurring troubles.
Rob, 78, and Michele, 68, were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Sunday afternoon. Reports said their throats were slit and they had multiple stab wounds. The bodies were found by their daughter, Romy.
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