“My beau is terribly ill and sometimes, as now, in the hospital. He has very wonderful care and I try not to stand around wringing my hands, but I am worried all the time and pretending to be cheery all the time, which is more exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally than any work I’ve ever done.”

It’s been almost 40 years since Meryl Streep, arguably one of the greatest actresses alive, first spoke of her loving partner only days before he entered the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in March 1978, which sadly proved to be his last stop. She had met John Cazale two years earlier and was with him when he died, muttering the words, “It’s all right Meryl.”