US actress Meryl Streep and husband Don Gummer have been separated for more than six years

American actress Meryl Streep and her husband, sculptor Don Gummer, have been separated for more than six years after being married for 45 years. Photo: AFP

It looks like it is not only American actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who have been keeping their separation under wraps.

American actress Meryl Streep and her husband, sculptor Don Gummer, have been separated for several years after being married for 45 years.

“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,” Streep’s representative said in a statement to the American media.

According to celebrity gossip website Page Six, which broke the news, Streep, who recently appeared in the comedy mystery TV series Only Murders In The Building (2021 to present), was still seen wearing her wedding band while receiving the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts in Spain on Oct 20.

Streep, 74, and Gummer, 76, have not been seen in public together since the Academy Awards in March 2018, in which she was nominated for Best Actress for her role as Katharine Graham, the former publisher of The Washington Post, in the historical political thriller The Post (2017).

Streep has won the Oscars three times – twice for Best Actress and once for Best Supporting Actress – while holding the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated 21 times.

She first met Gummer in 1978 through her brother Harry. She was then mourning the death of her boyfriend, American actor John Cazale, who died of lung cancer at age 42 in March 1978.

Streep and Gummer, an American, married six months later, and they have four children together – singer-songwriter Henry Wolfe, 43, and actresses Mamie, 40, Grace, 37, and Louisa, 32.

They have kept their relationship low profile since their marriage, although the actress gave a rare peek in their couplehood when she was interviewed by Vogue magazine in 2002.

She had said then that the secret to their marriage 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,” she had said. “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.”

Pinkett Smith revealed in an interview that aired last Wednesday that she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016 – six years before the actor struck comedian Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars in March 2022 for making a joke about his wife. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network