The real-life Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort revealed that the late Rob Reiner sent him a video following his dad Max Belfort’s death in 2019.
“Rob Reiner sent this to my father on his death bed. Truly a class act. RIP,” Jordan, 63 — who inspired the story of the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street — wrote via Instagram on Monday, December 15.
In the video, Reiner greeted Max and introduced himself, noting that he “played [him] in the movie.”
“It was a privilege,” Reiner gushed. “I got to know your son. I know he’s with you now and everyone that you love is with you now and I just want to say hi. You gave me a great thrill to be able to play you in the film.”
Reiner starred as Max in The Wolf of Wall Street alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, who appeared as Jordan. The film, produced and directed by Martin Scorsese, follows Jordan’s career as a stockbroker in New York City and how his firm engaged in corruption and fraud on Wall Street, which led to his downfall.
Reiner previously discussed how he had “fun” working on The Wolf of Wall Street with Scorsese, 83, because he “has a way of setting a tone on the set that allows everybody to feel comfortable and have fun.”
Jon Favreau, Leonardo DiCaprio and Rob Reiner in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Mary Cybulski/©Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
“He gets the best out of people,” Reiner explained in a 2013 interview with HuffPost. “You know, you have a script, but then he lets you improvise and he knows that if you can improvise, you’re going to hit on something that’s going to be a little bit more alive than anything that could be written in the script. And since his films are really so character driven — the characters are the story, you know? — he doesn’t heavily plot movies. They’re kind of character pieces and the characters, like I say, become the stories. So he knows, if that is going to be the case, that he’s got to make it so that the actors can squeeze the most out of their characters.”
On Sunday, December 14, Rob and his wife, Michele Reiner, were found dead inside of their Los Angeles home. The filmmaker was 78, while his wife was 68.
“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,” a family spokesman told Variety. “We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.”
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to Us that Rob and Michele were found dead “from apparent stab wounds.”
One day after the couple’s deaths, Us reported that Rob and Michele’s son Nick Reiner was arrested on a murder charge. (Rob and Michele also shared kids Jake, 34, Romy, 28, in addition to Rob’s daughter Tracy, 61, with ex Penny Marshall.)
The Reiner family was candid about Nick, 32, struggling with addiction and how it had caused tension within the family. Nick started to struggle with drug use as a teenager, which led to a rehab stint when he was 15. After several relapses and treatment stints, Nick began to live on the street — which he said led him to get clean.
“That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff,” Nick explained to People in a 2016 interview. “I met crazy great people there, so out of my element. 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. When I was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck. There were a lot of dark years there.”
Nick’s experiences led to the inspiration behind Rob’s 2015 film Being Charlie, which told the story of an addict son (Nick Robinson) of a California politician (Cary Elwes) who starts a relationship with a rehab patient (Morgan Saylor).
“If your kid is going through rough times, [as] the parent, your main job is to keep your child safe. So I would do anything,” Rob shared during a Build Series interview in 2015. “At the end of the day, I know my child better than an expert does and I probably should have trusted my own instinct and that’s one of the things I did learn about the whole experience.”
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