Rex Reed, Film Critic Known for Acerbic Reviews, Dies at 87

Source: New York Times


Rex Reed in 2017. If he disliked someone or — worse — found the person merely uninteresting, it was wise to duck and cover. Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

Rex Reed, Film Critic Known for Acerbic Reviews, Dies at 87

He fawned over Old Hollywood stars and sparred with Frank Sinatra. Nora Ephron marveled at his ability to get his subjects to say the things they did.

By Clyde Haberman
May 12, 2026
Updated 8:08 a.m. ET

Rex Reed, who across six decades reviewed films and wrote about movie stars in prose that was graceful and evocative but often also the literary equivalent of a poison-tipped dagger plunged between the shoulder blades, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

A statement from the publicist Sean Katz said that a longtime friend, William Kapfer, confirmed the death, after a short illness.

Mr. Reed made no bones about his fascination with filmdom’s grandes dames of yesteryear — the Dietrichs, Bergmans, Lansburys and Mercouris — and he tended to write about them glowingly. “I am a fan of what was, not what is,” he said. Modern actresses barely raised his thick eyebrows. “The old broads are the ones who interest me the most,” he once told Newsweek. “Nothing bores me more than these miniskirted girls with nothing on their minds.”

Here he was on Bette Davis in 1968, when he was a regular contributor to The New York Times: “Froggy-eyed, lipstick-slashed or glowing like a Tiffany lamp, she is exciting enough, even when photographed through gauze, to make the latest youth idols about as interesting as a withered logarithm.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/movies/rex-reed-dead.html