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Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.
Meryl Streep Calls Being a Grandmother ‘Divine’
‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ opens May 1, but the role she can’t stop thinking about is off-screen
Meryl Streep with her four adult children (from left to right), Henry Wolfe, Mamie Gummer, Grace Gummer and Louisa Jacobson in 2023 in Los Angeles. Streep has six grandchildren.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Key takeaways
- Meryl Streep has six grandchildren age 6 and under and flies across the country often to see them.
- She finally understands what her mother knew: You cannot get time back.
- She admits she may be overinvolved with her grandkids and does not sound sorry about it.
Meryl Streep is 76, back on-screen as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada 2, opening May 1. But what she cannot stop talking about has nothing to do with Hollywood or fashion.
Her favorite topic? Her grandchildren. They are 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
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“I find it divine,” Streep told Vogue for the magazine’s May 2026 cover story. “I have six grandchildren, six under six.... I hope we’re not done, but we’ll see.”
When filmmaker Greta Gerwig, who interviewed Streep for the article, noted that the three-time Oscar winner was “incredibly involved” with her grandchildren, Streep cut in before the sentence landed. “Some say overinvolved,” she said.
Three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep, 76, says the role she cannot stop thinking about is offscreen.
TheStewartofNY/Getty Images
What drives the urgency, she said, is time. “It’s just grabbing seconds, just grabbing everything you can of them, with the knowledge of how completely fleeting it all is and how rapidly time goes. This is what my mother said to me, and I said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ It’s the longest, shortest time. And you can’t get anything back. So take as much as you can.”
The logistics are not simple. “The only thing is that they’re on two coasts, so I’m in the airplane a lot,” she told Vogue of her family.
Streep has described her personal life as “a crowded life. But I signed up for that, and that’s what I have,” she told an audience at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. She has four adult children: Henry Wolfe, Mamie Gummer, Grace Gummer and Louisa Jacobson.
She has a Netflix limited series, The Corrections, in the works. Clearly, Streep is not slowing down — and neither are her grandchildren.
Check out AARP’s Guide to Grandparenting for expert advice on bonding with grandchildren, planning multigenerational travel and making the most of every moment.
Disclaimer: The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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