Oscar winner’s secret sorrow REVEALED!
Julie & Julia star Meryl Streep credits her husband for giving her the strength to go on after her cancer-stricken first love died in her arms.
The Oscar-winning actress was engaged to marry actor John Cazale – best known for his role as Fredo Corleone, the troubled son of Marlon Brando‘s Mafia Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather I and II."
They had met when both were unknown actors toiling for Joseph Papp‘s Public Theatre and were frequent habitués at The Cedar Tavern, a Greenwich Village bar known for bohemian frivolity.
Cazale, who starred in the classic crime thriller Dog Day Afternoon with pal Al Pacino was just 42 when he passed away in March 1978.
He and Meryl had just finished filming the Viet Nam war classic The Deer Hunter.
"Meryl was only 28 at the time. They’d planned to get married the following Christmas, but John got sick during production of the film," the source said.
"Somehow he managed to finish his scenes. But the cancer progressed rapidly. Meryl quit acting to care for him. She put everything else in her life on hold.
"And when he died in her arms, Meryl went to pieces."
She was heartbroken, sources say, but thanks to her husband, sculptor Don Gummer, she learned to love again.
"Don rescued Meryl when she thought she couldn’t go on after John’s death," a longtime friend told The ENQUIRER.
"Meryl was close to a breakdown. But Don pulled her through and married her just six months after John died."
"I don’t know what I’d do without my husband," the 60-year-old actress – who’s won Oscars for Sophie’s Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer said.
"I’d be dead, emotionally at least, if I hadn’t met him."
