‘Life is pain without you’: Cary Elwes and Martin Scorsese pay tribute to Rob Reiner as autopsy reports sealed | Movies

More than two weeks after the deaths of the film director Rob Reiner and his photographer wife, Michele, friends and colleagues continue to pay tribute to the couple.

Writing on Instagram, Cary Elwes, who starred in Reiner’s 1987 classic The Princess Bride, said he only now felt able to post publicly about his loss.

“Enough time has passed that I can finally put my grief into words,” wrote Elwes, saying that the first time he met Reiner, aged 24, he “fell in love with him”.

“As we began spending more time together I knew this was someone I wanted in my life. I also knew that by casting me … he was giving me the keys to the castle.”

The actor posted some behind-the-scenes footage from the film, adding that he could not remember “a single day without laughter”.

“The movie is about love, loyalty and sacrifice. Things that Rob held dear. Which is among the many reasons he was the perfect person to direct it.

“And if I could make him laugh in return, I felt like I had won the lottery. His laugh was one of the greatest sounds I’ve ever known – so heartfelt it still rings in my ears.

“This was a man who felt deeply,” wrote Elwes. “Whose heart was filled with love and compassion. He wasn’t impressed by how much money you had or if you had a privileged upbringing. He just wanted to know if you were a ‘good guy.’”

The Reiners’ son, Nick, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder after his parents bodies were discovered on 14 December in their Los Angeles home. He is being held without bail in a correctional facility in the city.

Elwes also paid tribute to Reiner’s wife, saying: “To say that they were a great team would be an understatement … my heart still aches every time I think of you, I know the grief of losing you too soon will likely never go away.”

He concluded with a quote from The Princess Bride: “Sure, death cannot stop true love but life is pain without you.”

In an essay in the New York Times, Martin Scorsese also paid tribute to Reiner, who he first met in the 1970s, saying:

“Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room. He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barrelling laugh.”

Reiner had a supporting role in Scorsese’s 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, in which he played the father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jordan Belfort.

“He could improvise with the best”, wrote Scorsese, “he was a master at comedy, he worked beautifully with Leo and the rest of the guys, and he understood the human predicament of his character: The man loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew that he was destined for a fall.”

This week, a Los Angeles superior court judge agreed to bar the release of the Reiners’ autopsy reports, at the request of the LAPD.

A court order received by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner last week put a security hold on the cases to restrict the public release of “any investigative information, notes, reports or photos” related to the investigation.

The medical examiner’s office had previously confirmed their deaths were the result of homicide, with their public database listing the cause as “multiple sharp force injuries”.

After the Reiners’ killing, President Donald Trump posted that Rob Reiner’s death was “due to the anger he caused others” from being outspokenly anti-Trump.

Trump called Reiner “tortured and struggling” and attributed his death to “his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.

“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.”

The president’s comments were widely condemned, with Joe Rogan adding his voice to the critics last week.

Speaking to comedian Shane Gillis, the hugely popular podcaster said of Trump: “If you say that privately that’s one thing, which is also crazy, but it’s so disappointing.”

Rogan, who supported Trump in 2024 but has recently expressed disquiet over some of his policies, equated the president’s apparent lack of empathy with “people that were celebrating when Charlie Kirk got shot”.

“Imagine if Obama tweeted something about someone after they died in this way. That this person was a deranged person that hated Obama”, Rogan continued. “It just shows you how crazy it is, the way Trump thinks and talks.”

Rogan concluded by suggesting an adviser should have taken Trump’s “fucking phone” away when he decided to weigh in on Reiner’s death.