Highlights
- Meryl Streep and Don Gummer recently announced their separation after over four decades together, with rumors of Streep’s affair with Jack Nicholson playing a role in their split.
- Streep and Gummer’s relationship started under heartbreaking circumstances, with Streep meeting Gummer shortly after the tragic loss of her first love, John Cazale, to cancer.
- Despite their successful careers, Streep and Gummer chose to keep their romantic life private and have always valued goodwill, flexibility, and balancing work and family in their relationship.
Not many relationships in Hollywood pass the test of time. In fact, celebrity couples that have been together for over a decade are an extremely rare occurrence. Examples include Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, who first met on the set of Bosom Buddies and have been married for over 30 years now, and Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, who sparked up a romance on the set of Green Lantern back in 2010 and are now not only happily married with four children.
Meryl Streep and Don Gummer had one of the longest marriages in Hollywood, with over four decades together. However, the pair recently announced they have been separated for nearly six years. They always tried to maintain their relationship out of the spotlight, but what was their marriage like before their recent split?
Jack Nicholson Might’ve Played A Role In Meryl Streep And Don Gummer’s Split
After more than four decades and four children together, Meryl Streep and Don Gummer announced they have been separated for over six years. “While they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart,” a representative for Streep said in a statement to People.
While neither has openly spoken about their separation, someone close to the actress claims that Streep’s rumored affair with Jack Nicholson led to her split with Gummer.
According to Nicholson’s biography, he and Streep had an affair while filming Ironweed in 1987, nine years after the actress had married Gummer. “The book opened old wounds and that has led to bitter fights. Now, their marriage is struggling,” the source said at the time.
Meryl Streep And Don Gummer Met Under Heartbreaking Circumstances
Meryl Streep met her husband, Don Gummer, weeks after the tragic loss of her first love. Back in the late 1970s, Streep was dating The Godfather actor John Cazale, whom she had worked with before in a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. “He wasn’t like anybody I’d ever met,” Streep once said, Michael Schulman wrote in his biography Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep. “It was the specificity of him, and his sort of humanity and his curiosity about people, his compassion.”
After a year of dating, the couple received devastating news in 1977: Cazale was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The award-winning actress took a short break from acting to care for Cazale. In fact, she is said to have accepted a role in the movie The Deer Hunter only because Cazale had been cast in the film and wanted to be close to him. Unfortunately, Cazale died in 1978 after his cancer metastasized to his bones.
“I was so close that I didn’t notice the deterioration,” Streep said.
After Cazale’s death, Streep traveled to Canada. When she finally came back to New York, she learned that she was being evicted from the apartment she shared with Cazale. She called her brother to help her pack, but he didn’t come along. He brought his friend Don Gummer, who offered Streep to move into his Soho loft while he was out of the country.
While Gummer was away, he and Streep kept writing each other letters. Although the actress wasn’t sure she was ready to get into a new relationship again, she decided to give Gummer a try. When the sculptor came back to the country, Streep continued staying in his loft, and they began formally dating. Six months later, the pair tied the knot in a private ceremony.
Meryl Streep And Don Gummer Kept Their Romantic Life Private
Meryl Streep and Don Gummer got married in the garden of her parent’s Mason’s Island home in October 1978. A year after their wedding, Streep and Gummer welcomed their first child together, a son named Henry Wolfe Gummer. In the following years, the couple welcomed three daughters: Mary Willa “Mamie” Gummer, Grace Jane Gummer, and Louisa Jacobson Gummer.
Although Streep went on to become one of the biggest actresses of all time and Gummer became an award-winning sculptor, the couple chose to keep their relationship private for the most part. Throughout the years, the award-winning actress shared very little about their love life, but the couple have been photographed side-by-side on occasion. The last time they were publicly spotted together was at the 2018 Oscars.
During a 2002 interview for Vogue, interview, Streep shared some insight into her relationship with Gummer, admitting that the secret to their relationship was “goodwill and willingness to bend — and to shut up every once in a while.”
The Devil Wears Prada star also revealed what it was like to raise a family while being a successful actor. “There’s no road map on how to raise a family: It’s always an enormous negotiation,” she explained. “But I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can’t imagine eschewing one for the other.”
Source: NewsFinale
