Nick Reiner, 32, the son of the Hollywood director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, who was arrested late Sunday after his parents were found dead at their California home, had spoken over the years about his struggles with drug abuse and bouts of homelessness.
“When I was out there, I could’ve died,” he told People magazine in 2016, speaking about being homeless. “It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it.”
Rob and Nick Reiner also worked together on a movie, “Being Charlie,” that was loosely inspired by the son’s early life. Rob Reiner directed, and Nick Reiner wrote the screenplay alongside Matt Elisofon, whom he met in rehab.
The movie’s release signaled a victory lap of sorts for Nick Reiner, who had been in and out of rehab and experienced homelessness since around age 15. On Monday, he was being held in a jail in Los Angeles County on $4 million bail; no information about any criminal charges was immediately available.
“Being Charlie” follows the entitled, drug-addicted son of a high-profile actor turned political candidate in California. Although it was not autobiographical, Rob Reiner said the experience did a great deal to strengthen his relationship with his son.
“It forced me to have to see more clearly, and understand more deeply, what Nick had gone through,” Mr. Reiner said in a joint interview with his son on BUILD, YouTube’s live interview series, in 2016. “And, I think it forced him to see things that I had experienced during this process.”
“It definitely brought us closer together,” Mr. Reiner said.
In the interview, Nick Reiner spoke of his childhood relationship with his father. “We didn’t bond a lot,” he said, adding that working on the film with his father had made him “feel closer to him.”
At the time the film was released, Nick Reiner said he had been back home in Los Angeles and was staying clean.
“Now, I’ve been home for a really long time, and I’ve sort of gotten acclimated back to being in L.A. and being around my family,” he told People magazine. “But there was a lot of dark years there.”
Rob Reiner had expressed hopes of working with his son again, although Nick Reiner has not compiled any further screenwriting credits.
“Anytime I would get an opportunity to work with him I would do it, but I do understand him wanting to forge his own way,” the director said of his son in a 2016 interview with NPR. “I do know what that’s about, I went through it, and he’s brilliant and talented and he’s going to figure out his path.”
Nick Reiner’s most recent public appearance alongside his father was in September, when the director was photographed with his family on the red carpet for the premiere of “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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