Meryl Streep met Don Gummer, her husband of forty years, at the beginning of 1978. But their first meeting was not the best.
Streep was at the bedside of her two-year partner, actor John Cazale, who had been sick for a while before he died around this time.
Streep met Cazale when she was trying out for Shakespeare in the Park. Also, in “Measure for Measure,” they were both given roles that put them against each other.
Offstage, they started dating almost right away, and Meryl Streep moved into the Tribeca apartment of the guy she was seeing not long after that. She told Michael Schulman, who was writing Cazale’s biography, that the actor was one of a kind: “He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met.”
In May of 1977, the couple found out that Cazale had lung cancer that had spread to the rest of his body. This made things even worse. Streep did everything she could to make sure she would be able to meet the needs of her partner.
Cazale died too soon on March 12, 1978, while he was a patient at the New York hospital Memorial Sloan Kettering. Streep was 29 years old when he was locked up in the institution. He had lived in the same apartment since before he was locked up.
Schulman said that Meryl Streep did not want to accept that the person she loved most in the world was dying in the couple’s last minutes together before Cazale took his last breath.
Schulman wrote in “Her Again – Becoming Meryl Streep” that she cried and banged on his chest, and for a split second, he “opened his eyes” and told her everything would be okay.
Joe Papp, who is in charge of Shakespeare in the Park, and Schulman, who told me this, both said that Meryl Streep and the star of “The Godfather” were close. This chemistry could be seen and felt at the site.
When Cazale’s health started to get worse, his girlfriend stayed with him for the next few months and went with him to all of his doctor’s appointments.
A year after Cazale died, the actress from “Mamma Mia!” talked about his death.
She said that the event had stuck with her and that the scary thing had changed how she saw a few things in life. After the death of her partner, Streep went to Canada to see a friend.
When she got back to New York, she found out that she had to leave the apartment she had shared with her lover. Her brother helped her pack, and he brought a friend with him. Don Gummer was a sculptor who lived near Meryl Streep and had met her before.
Gummer asked Streep to stay in his SoHo loft while he was traveling because Gummer would be out of the country. During that time, the two people wrote letters to each other, which made their relationship stronger.
Gummer went on a trip, and when he got back, Streep kept living in his old apartment. Six more months went by, and on September 30, 1978, the couple finally got married.
The ceremony took place in the backyard of Streep’s childhood home in Mason’s Island, Connecticut, in the United States. On the other hand, her mother wasn’t very nice about how quickly the new relationship grew.
Even though this happened, Streep and Gummer stayed married and started a family together. They had three girls and one boy. Henry, the first and oldest child of the couple, was born in November 1979. Like his mother, he went into the entertainment business.
Meryl Streep said that her job as an actress let her spend more time with her kids, which she wouldn’t have been able to do if she had worked at a desk job.
She said that the decisions she made about her job were never based on how much time she could spend with her family. Instead, she said, she found a way to balance the two.
Even though she was famous, she was still able to live a normal, private life.
She even had lunch with other moms and took part in events at her kids’ school. Streep said that time in her life was “one of the happiest times” in her entire life.
Streep said she was “always happy to take care of the kids” because her husband was “always happy to take care of the kids.” This made her feel less “guilty” about being away from her family because she was always working.
The winner of the Golden Globe Award has no regrets about how important her job was to her, and she is sure that she made good decisions about both her work and her family life.
In 2012, when the actress won the Oscar for Best Leading Actress in a Role for her role in “The Iron Lady,” she had tears in her eyes as she thanked her loving husband.
“To start, I’d like to say thank you to Don. Meryl Streep told the crowd, “I want him to know that what I love most about our life is what you’ve given me.”