Meryl Streep and Husband of 45 Years Don Gummer Have Been Separated for Six Years: “They Will Always Care for Each Other”

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 21 October 2023

It’s news we weren’t expecting to see this morning: the legendary Meryl Streep has been separated from Don Gummer for six years, multiple outlets report; the two married in 1978 and just marked their forty-fifth wedding anniversary on September 30.

“Don Gummer and Meryl Streep have been separated for more than six years, and while they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart,” a representative for Streep said in a statement to People.

The couple—who share four children together—were never incredibly forward-facing and haven’t been seen publicly together since the 2018 Oscars. People reports that Streep was seen wearing her wedding band as recently as Friday at the 2023 Princesa de Asturias Awards in Spain.

Streep met Gummer, a sculptor whose work has been featured in exhibitions around the world since the early 1970s, through her brother in 1978, the same year they married. At the time, she was mourning the death of her boyfriend, fellow actor John Cazale, who died of lung cancer. Streep and Gummer shared an instant connection and married just six months later at Streep’s parents’ home. A notoriously private couple, in a 2002 interview with Vogue, Streep gave a rare glimpse into her marriage: she shared the secret to their longevity was “goodwill and willingness to bend—and to shut up every once in a while. 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.”

When Streep won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in The Iron Lady in 2012, Gummer was the first person she thanked: “First, 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.

This split follows the news this month that Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith—another Hollywood couple that we thought defied the odds and made it—had also separated years ago, with their split going as far back as 2016.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.