“I think a friendship always grows if you work with someone and love that person,” Short told Extra on Monday of his bond with Streep—and while this isn’t an outright admission that the two are dating, it does feel sort of angled in that direction (even though Short’s rep said last winter that the pair were “just very good friends, nothing more”). Okay, I want to respect what I’m hearing, but…I’ve heard that before? From celebrities who turned out to be in love? I’m seeing all this as somehow textually linked to Mr. Darcy from Bridget Jones’s Diary insisting that he “likes Bridget very much, just as she is.” Sometimes the simplest things are the most romantic!
But whether Streep and Short are dating or not, I do feel it’s time to embrace Short as the sex symbol that, at 73 years of age, he richly deserves to be. Just take a look at this photo, taken on a night out with Streep in Santa Monica in February:
Photo: Courtesy of Backgrid
I mean, have you ever seen a more caught-in-headlights-yet-perfectly-tousled expression? This picture is giving me strong f*ckboy vibes (in a not-bad way, for once), but Short has always come across as the opposite of a player. For one thing, he has spoken about the loss of his late wife, Nancy Dolman, to cancer in absolutely beautiful terms, telling People in 2019: “Our marriage was a triumph, so it’s tough. She died in 2010, but I still communicate with her all the time. It’s, ‘Hey, Nan,’ you know? How would she react to this decision or that, especially regarding our three kids.” I’m weeping, but this elegance and warmth also remind me of the way Streep has referred to her own recent marriage. Let’s just say that if I were the Parent Trap twins, I would be setting them up.
Ultimately, whether Short and Streep are together or just friends who are going to have this story forwarded to them by their PR people and laugh their asses off about it via text (am I just drafting fanfic now?), there’s one thing we can agree on: Streep’s face in the latter photo with Short looks basically the same as it did in that famous shot of her on the New York subway, and it simply isn’t fair. (Meryl, follow Marina Abramovic’s example and drop a skin care line—or at least the skin care routine!)
