'The Wolf of Wall Street' director Martin Scorsese pays heartfelt tribute to Rob Reiner

Martin Scorsese penned an emotional essay honouring his late friend Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer.

In the piece published in The New York Times, Scorsese wrote, "Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele."

"From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness. But there’s no other choice."

The 83-year-old recalled first meeting with the legend behind When Harry Met Sally in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, describing him as hilarious yet never overbearing.

“He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh,” Scorsese wrote.

He remembered how Reiner’s laugh filled an auditorium during a Lincoln Center tribute, capturing his joy and comic timing.

The director praised Reiner’s work calling Misery “a very special film, beautifully acted by Kathy Bates and James Caan.”

He described This Is Spinal Tap as “an immaculate creation.”

Scorsese also reflected on casting Reiner in The Wolf of Wall Street as Leonardo DiCaprio’s father.

Scorsese admitted the iconic dialogue from the movie still moves him deeply.

“You got all the money in the world,” Reiner’s character says in one scene. “You need everybody else’s money?”

Concluding his tribute, Scorsese called the deaths of Rob and Michele “an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality.”

He wrote that the only solace is time.

The Oscar winner confessed that he chooses to imagine his friend alive and well.

“…one day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend,” the Shutter Island filmmaker ended the emotional note.