Michele Singer Reiner, photographer who inspired 1980s rom-com's happy end, dies

Michele Singer Reiner, a photographer, movie producer and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights who inspired the happy conclusion to the 1980s romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally…,” has died.

She and her husband, director Rob Reiner, were found stabbed to death Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Reiners’ 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, was arrested on suspicion of murder and held without bail Monday in connection with their deaths.

Michele Singer was working as a still photographer and Rob Reiner was directing “When Harry Met Sally...” when they met on the film's set. Within seven months, the couple had married. They had three children: Nick, Jake and Romy.

Rob Reiner told The Guardian in 2018 that meeting his wife influenced his decision to change the ending of the movie so that Harry and Sally got married.

“Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” he said. “But then I met Michele and I thought: OK, I see how this works.”

As a photographer, Michele Singer Reiner shot the cover image of President Donald Trump for his 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal.” She went on to work on the 1990 horror film “Misery” as a special photographer.

Later, she was a producer for “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” “God & Country,” “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” and “Shock and Awe,” according to IMDB.

“Michele was an enormously talented photographer whose eye applied not only to what she captured on film but also to her own personal esthetic,” actor, singer and producer Rita Wilson wrote in a social media tribute. “Her work as a producer focused on social justice and creating awareness of our world. She was wry, funny, opinionated but also reasonable and self reflective.”

Trump on Monday blamed Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition to him for the couple's killings, sharing the unsubstantiated claim in a social media post that drew criticism even from some prominent conservatives. He did not mention his personal connection to Michele Singer Reiner.

Wilson, who had roles in “Sleepless in Seattle” and the Rob Reiner-directed “The Story of Us,” said she and husband Tom Hanks have been friends with the Reiners since their children were toddlers. In her Instagram post, she reminisced about the couple's screening parties in which they paired themed foods and discussions with classic films.

As for her social justice advocacy, Michele Singer Reiner had said she was inspired in part by her mother, a Holocaust survivor.

The Reiners were board members of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which organized and funded federal court challenges to California’s 2008 same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8.

A fellow board member, screenwriter and director Dustin Lance Black, later worked with Rob Reiner on the play “8” about the federal trial that got the proposition overturned. With the couple’s deaths, Black said, “The world has lost two of its greatest champions of justice, love and equality. I have lost two of the most spectacular human beings I will ever know.”

Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ+ political advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign, also reflected on their unwavering allyship.

“So many in our movement remember how Rob and Michele organized their peers, brought strategists and lawyers together and helped power landmark Supreme Court decisions that made marriage equality the law of the land — and they remained committed to the cause until their final days," Robinson said.

Rob Reiner had said his wife was a driving force behind the couple’s activism: “There’s just too much injustice in the world, and she wants to fix it all.”

He told The New York Times in 1989 that the cinematographer on “When Harry Met Sally...,” Barry Sonnenfeld, predicted he would marry her.

She had visited the set with Sonnenfeld’s then-fiancee, during a scene when the characters were having an argument, Rob Reiner said.

“I look over and I see this girl, and whoo! I was attracted immediately,” he said. “I wormed my way into their lunch. But that’s what he said to me: ‘You’re going to marry her.’ And one thing led to another and here we are.”

Rob Reiner, from left, Michele Singer Reiner, Romy Reiner, Nick Reiner, Maria Gilfillan, and Jake Reiner arrive at the premiere of "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues" on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

ADDITION ADDS MAIDEN NAME: FILE - Rony Reiner, left, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner attend the Friars Club Entertainment Icon Award ceremony honoring Billy Crystal at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, Nov. 12, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Christmas decorations hang from a tree on the front yard to Rob Reiner's residence Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman)

CORRECTS IDENTITY OF NICK AND JAKE REINER - FILE - Honoree Rob Reiner, second left, poses with his wife Michele, left, and children Jake, center, Romy, and Nick at the 41st annual Chaplin Award Gala at Avery Fisher Hall, April 28, 2014, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

ADDITION ADDS MAIDEN NAME: FILE - Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner arrive on the red carpet at the State Department for the Kennedy Center Honors gala dinner, Dec. 2, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states Thursday, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to attack even as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated and predicted the war would end soon.

Iran’s strikes on its neighbors along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East. That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war. Britain planned to hold a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait, through which 20% of all traded oil passes in peacetime, once the fighting is over.

Trump has insisted the strait, which was open to traffic before the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran, can be taken by force — but said it is not up to the U.S. to do that. In his address to the American people Wednesday night, he encouraged countries that depend on oil passing through Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”

Iran responded defiantly to Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed U.S. military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat.”

A spokesman for Iran’s military insisted Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities. “The centers you think you have targeted are insignificant, and our strategic military productions take place in locations of which you have no knowledge and will never reach,” Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari claimed.

Just before Trump began his address — in which he said U.S. “core strategic objectives are nearing completion” — explosions were heard in Dubai as air defenses worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage.

Less than a half-hour after the president was done, Israel said its military was also working to intercept incoming missiles. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.

Attacks continued across Iran on Thursday, with strikes reported in multiple cities.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon, home to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who are fighting Israel, which has launched a ground invasion. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Iranian attacks on some two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

The 35 countries speaking Thursday, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the countries will discuss “viable diplomatic and political measures” to resume shipping.

But no country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. There is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the strait even after U.S. and Israeli attacks on it cease.

The idea of an international effort has echoes of the “coalition of the willing,” led by the U.K. and France, that was assembled to underpin Ukraine’s security in the event of a ceasefire in that war. The coalition is, in part, an attempt to demonstrate to Washington that Europe is doing more for its own security in the face of frequent criticism from Trump.

The U.S. has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for a ceasefire, but Trump didn’t say anything in his speech about the diplomatic efforts or bring up his April 6 deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face severe retaliation.

The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of gasoline and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.

On Thursday, Brent crude, the international standard, rose again and was at $108 in spot trading, up about 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war.

Though the oil and gas that typically transits the strait is primarily sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region joining Thursday's call about the strait. The supply of jet fuel has also been interrupted by the conflict, with consequences for travel worldwide.

Weissert reported from Washington and Rising from Bangkok.

Mourners gather during a funeral procession for Alireza Tangsiri, head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, and others killed in Israeli strikes in late March, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A firefighter extinguishes a car at the site of Israeli airstrikes, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

The Indian flagged LPG carrier Jag Vasant transporting liquefied petroleum gas, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, after it arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump walks from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)