Meryl Streep and her husband of 45 years, Don Gummer, have called it quits.
“Don Gummer and Meryl Streep have been separated for more than 6 years, and while they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart,” a rep for Streep, 74, told Us Weekly in a statement on Saturday, October 21.
Page Six was first to report the news.
The Only Murders in the Building actress and Gummer, 76, made their last public appearance together at the 2018 Academy Awards. Gummer joined Streep on the red carpet before the ceremony, where she was honored with her 21st Oscar nomination. (Streep ultimately lost the Best Actress category to Frances McDormand.)
Streep first met Gummer, a sculptor, in 1978 after being introduced by her brother. They wed six months later before welcoming four children together: Henry, 43, Mamie, 40, Grace, 37, and Louisa, 32.
While Streep and Gummer long kept their relationship private, she knew what made it successful.
“Goodwill and willingness to bend — and to shut up every once in a while,” the actress told Vogue in 2002. “There’s no road map on how to raise a family: It’s always an enormous negotiation. 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.”
Gummer was often Streep’s No. 1 supporter — and red carpet date — throughout their marriage. After Streep won an Oscar statue in 2012, for her role in The Iron Lady, Gummer was the first person that she addressed in her victory speech.
“I’m going to thank Don because when you thank your husband at the end of the speech they play him out with the music, and I want him to know that everything I value most in our lives, you’ve given me,” she said during the broadcast.
Streep and Gummer were also united in raising their children, with the Devil Wears Prada star often portraying “bad cop” to Gummer’s “good cop.”
“Teamwork is everything. My husband Don was very involved. He was a little more relaxed when it comes to raising kids. I was more of a tiger mom,” Streep told the Sydney Morning Herald in June 2019. “When my son Henry was little, he wanted to learn to play the piano but the teacher we hired was not very good, and Henry lost interest. I thought he should continue to take lessons, but my husband thought it was my dream that I was trying to impose on him. Today, my son is 37 and he’s a musician. Tiger Mom Meryl was right.”
Streep added at the time that she was “too protective” of her kids since they needed “to learn to stand on their own two feet.”
Streep and Gummer are also grandparents of four. Henry and wife Tamryn Storm Hawker share two children, while Mamie and her husband, Mehar Sethi, are parents to a son. Grace welcomed her first baby with husband Mark Ronson in March.
