Meryl Streep’s 4 Children: Everything to Know

Meryl Streep and her husband Don Gummer share four children: Henry, Mamie, Grace and Louisa

Meryl Streep and her husband, Don Gummer, have always been keen on keeping their family life as private as possible, particularly during their children’s younger years. Streep revealed that she learned this valuable lesson from none other than Robert Redford.

“Robert Redford taught me that when they were babies: ‘They are not your props.’ I really admired the way he protected his family,” the Oscar winner shared with Good Housekeeping in 2008. “It’s something I consciously emulated.”

After they got married in 1978, Streep and Gummer became parents to four children: a son named Henry and three daughters named Mamie, Grace, and Louisa.

Despite being one of the greatest and most decorated actors in history, Meryl Streep has often stated that her most important and challenging role is that of a parent. When asked whether motherhood or acting was more difficult, she didn’t hesitate to respond, “Mothering. Definitely. Acting – that’s praise, money, fulfillment. Mothering – they don’t even say, ‘Thank you.’ They don’t even clear the table unless you say, ‘Excuse me.’ Real life has no comparison to acting. I can’t really call acting work, since it’s secretly so fun. Even the difficult things; it’s satisfying to do the difficult things well.”

She went on to explain, “Acting isn’t like real life. Life is about not being sure: Is this the right school for this kid? All those uncertainties.”

Now that Meryl Streep and Don Gummer’s son and three daughters are all grown up and accomplished artists in their own right, they have become more open about their talented family. Here’s a closer look at Streep and Gummer’s four children.

Henry Wolfe Gummer

Henry Wolfe Gummer is the eldest child of Meryl Streep and Don Gummer, born on November 13, 1979, in New York. Unlike the rest of his family, Henry has chosen to maintain a lower profile and did not pursue a career in acting beyond college. He left New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts after two years to focus on music.

Henry explained his decision, saying, “For me, music was more stimulating from day to day. It was something that I didn’t need to be working on a project to practice. I can do it whenever, and I get satisfaction from completing songs that I never really got from acting.”

In his chosen field of music, Henry has found success, with some of his songs featured on soundtracks for his mother’s movies, such as “Julie and Julia” and “Ricki and the Flash.” He acknowledged that being Meryl Streep’s son has its advantages but also comes with its own set of challenges.

“The fact that my mom is who she is can be overshadowing. Sometimes I worry that my story isn’t good enough. Sure, my mom is part of the story and I don’t get pissed when people ask me about her, but I wish I had something that could eclipse that as far as compelling storylines,” he said. “It’s not what I would necessarily choose but it is something I have to accept. There are a certain amount of assumptions that go along with that, which tend to not be fair, like the recognition somehow helps me. But it also hurts because people start to think that I don’t work hard and they don’t take me seriously.”

Henry and his wife Tamryn Gummer, whom he married in 2019, have two children, daughter Ida June Gummer, born in 2020, and son Quinn William Gummer, born in 2022.

Mamie Gummer

Mamie Gummer is the eldest daughter of Meryl Streep and Don Gummer. Born as Mary Gummer on August 3, 1983, in New York City, Mamie has made a name for herself as an accomplished actress. Interestingly, her first movie role was alongside her mother in the 1986 film “Heartburn” when she was just 20 months old. In the film, she played the character Annie and was credited as Natalie Stern to keep her identity as Meryl Streep’s daughter a secret.

During her early 20s, Mamie also ventured into modeling and secured her first role on Broadway in “Mr. Marmalade.” In an interview in April 2007, she commented on her Oscar-winning mother, saying, “At home, she’s not Meryl Streep — she’s Mum; she’s great, and I love her a lot.”

After her initial on-screen appearance as a baby, Mamie’s next significant film role came in 2006 when she starred alongside Richard Gere in “The Hoax.” This was followed by her appearance in the 2007 drama “Evening,” once again acting alongside her mother, Meryl Streep. They would later share the screen in the 2015 film “Ricki and the Flash.” Meryl Streep had high praise for her daughter, both on and off the screen, describing her as “brave and fearless and funny and free. She’s a free talent. It doesn’t have any cover-up — she’s the real deal.”

Mamie admitted that working with her mother in “Ricki and the Flash” initially concerned her, as she didn’t want their characters’ tense relationship to hurt her mother’s feelings.

“There’s this one scene where I really was quite eviscerating and I was worried about if my words actually wounded [Streep], but after the first take, I looked over and she just had this big grin on her face, so that was a pleasant surprise,” she recalled.

In addition to her movie roles, Mamie may be best known for her frequent appearances on the small screen, with recurring roles in “The Good Wife” and its spinoff “The Good Fight,” “True Detective,” “The Right Stuff,” “Blood of Zeus,” and her own short-lived series “Emily Owens, M.D.”

Mamie was the first of Streep’s children to become a grandmother. She and her then-fiancé (now husband), producer and writer Mehar Sethi, welcomed a baby boy in February 2019. Streep joked to Interview about her new status as a grandma, “I’ve been working like mad for quite a while, so I’m getting ready for my first grandchild. My daughter’s having a baby in February, so I’m going to go out and ruin her life. I specialize in unsolicited advice.”

Mamie was previously married to actor Ben Walker, from whom she split in 2013.

Grace Gummer

Grace Gummer was born in N.Y.C. on May 9, 1986. Like her doppelganger sister Mamie, Grace is also an actress, with her first role playing a younger version of mom Streep’s character in the 1993 movie House of Spirits. Grace was credited in the project as Jane Grey — like her sister before her, the step was taken to keep her true identity as Streep’s child private.

Grace graduated from Vassar College, her mother’s alma mater, with degrees in art history and Italian, then quickly followed her mom and big sister’s footsteps into acting. She began on stage in The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, followed by the small screen with Nickelodeon’s Gigantic and a small role in Larry Crowne. In 2012, she played Rachel in Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha, then had a two-episode arc on NBC’s Smash.

Grace has had an illustrious TV career since, starring in Zero Hour, The Newsroom, American Horror Story, Extant, Mr. Robot, Dr. Death and the upcoming Let the Right One In series.

Despite her celebrity pedigree, Grace appears to eschew the spotlight when she isn’t working. In July 2019, she married musician and actor Tay Straithairn, the son of actor David Straithairn, who appeared as Streep’s husband in the 1994 movie The River Wilds. Tay and Grace separated just a month after marrying and divorced in 2020.

In June 2021, Grace and music producer Mark Ronson confirmed their engagement, and the pair tied the knot on Aug. 8, 2021. In October 2022, PEOPLE confirmed that Grace and Ronson were expecting their first child together after Grace debuted her baby bump at W Magazine’s 50th anniversary party in N.Y.C.

The news that the couple had welcomed a daughter came from Ronson’s sister Annabelle Dexter-Jones.

“[Gummer] just had the baby. She’s two and a half months now,” she told PEOPLE in March 2023, shortly after Grace and Ronson were spotted out for a stroll with their newborn in N.Y.C. “She’s stunning.”

Louisa Jacobson

Streep and Gummer’s youngest child is daughter Louisa Jacobson, born Louisa Gummer on June 12, 1991, in Los Angeles. Like her mother and older sister Grace, Louisa graduated from Vassar, earning her degree in psychology in 2013. She received a fine arts master’s degree in acting from the Yale School of Drama and attended the British American Drama Academy in Oxford.

Louisa, who uses her middle name as her surname due to Screen Actors Guild rules (there’s another actress out there named Louisa Gummer), got her start in stage plays, including the production of Member of the Wedding alongside Tavi Gevinson in the 2018 Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her screen debut was in the TV movie Gone Hollywood in 2019 with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Louisa’s breakout came in 2022 with HBO Max’s period drama The Gilded Age, in which she stars as Marian Brook with Christine Baranski, who also acts alongside her sister Mamie in The Good Fight.

During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Louisa revealed that her famous mom sometimes gets on her nerves, calling her “Pickle” and asking many questions.

“Even today, she was like, ‘All right, Pickle, is the car coming for you?’ She’s like, ‘Do you have everything you need? Is someone coming to pick you up from the theater?’ ” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, Mom. I have it under control.’ She’s like, ‘OK, yeah. Enough from me. Enough from me.’ “

Noting that her mom is “very sweet,” she added one of Streep’s habits that drives her crazy: “If she starts to speak to someone who has an accent, she’ll just start doing the accent.”