“I could have retired and retired, but the children are out of the house and the scripts keep coming,” she jokes to Closer magazine.
Young and unhappy
It was on the theater stage that Streep first made a name for himself in the 1970s. In 1977, she got her first film role in the drama film “Julia”, but it was the role in “The Deer Hunter” the following year that really put her on the map.
The young shooting star garnered rave reviews, and was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The breakthrough was long-awaited, but today Meryl can not bear to look back on his early achievements. She remembers all too well how insecure and inadequate she felt.
– Sometimes I come across one of my films, where I am very young and very beautiful, but I was so unhappy, she tells Vanity Fair.
Hollywood was a tough workplace, and the beautiful girl from New Jersey kept hearing that she was not pretty enough to succeed in the film industry. The comments burned into the actor, and went far beyond his self-confidence.
– My mentor was a mother. She said to me, “Meryl, you are capable, you are amazing, and you can do whatever you want. If you are lazy, you will not achieve it, but if you really focus on what you want to achieve, then you can achieve everything. And I believed her, says the actor to Vanity Fair.
Acting became therapy
Eventually, Streep found an inner strength through the profession, which equipped her in the face of criticism.
– Acting has always given me great self-confidence. As a young woman, I often felt very misunderstood, and I was worried about what kind of impression others would get of me. Acting has been fantastic therapy for me, because the more I try to understand the women I play, the more I understand about myself, she tells the newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald.
It was on the theater stage that she met her first great love. Meryl quickly fell for acting colleague John Cazale (1935-1978), with whom she starred in “The Deer Hunter”.
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Unfortunately, the love story was to have a tragic end. Cazale was stricken with lung cancer, and Meryl went from boyfriend to nurse while accompanying her sick boyfriend to and from radiation treatments.
In 1978, Cazale died, and Streep was devastated.
“His death is still with me,” Meryl told People magazine the following year.
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In the midst of grief, she was thrown out of the apartment she had shared with her boyfriend, and got help from her brother and his friend, Don Gummer, to pack their things. The tragic time was soon turned into joy and hope.
Meryl got to stay with Gummer, and it did not take long before the two became a couple. Six months after her ex-boyfriend’s death, she married Gummer at home in her parents’ garden.
– Life is about making choices, and I am very happy with mine. “I have had a wonderful time raising my four children, and I have been fortunate to have had the support of a beautiful man,” she told the South China Morning Post.
Keep the kids out of the limelight
Meryl and Don have lived happily ever after, and have one of Hollywood’s longest marriages.
While Don has been at home a lot with the couple’s children Henry (41), Mamie (37), Grace (34) and Louisa (29), Meryl has lived out her acting dream. Streep has always taken breaks from film work to be with his loved ones.
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– We are close to each other. I’m proud of them, but I keep them out of the limelight. They hate it – and I can understand that, she tells the newspaper.
Now the children are long out of the nest, and the actor has full focus on the younger generation. Two years ago, she became a grandmother for the first time, when her daughter Mamie gave birth to a boy. Last year she also became the grandmother of little Ida, who is the daughter of her son Henry.
Streep has so far remained silent about the family increase. But there is little doubt that the role of grandmother is now the most important for her.