Also that year, Streep was nominated for the first time for an Academy Award for a small but stirring role in
The Deer Hunter as a woman in love with two men during the Vietnam conflict.
The Deer Hunter made many Hollywood directors eager to work with Streep. The first to grab her was Woody Allen, who cast her as his hostile ex-wife in Manhattan. In that role and in others to come, Streep demonstrated she was comfortable portraying an unlikable character.
In fact, Streep was perfectly suited to play the new roles that were opening up because of the feminist movement. Though Streep was a blonde with elegant features, she was rarely glamorous, and she could easily suppress her beauty and look ordinary. Playing a woman conflicted about divorcing her husband in Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, Streep embodied the difficult choices facing millions of women. "In 1979, nobody was talking about depression," Streep later told Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris, "but this woman probably thought about killing herself once or twice a day." One of the first movies to treat divorce from an egalitarian standpoint, Kramer vs. Kramer was a cultural landmark in American film. Streep's portrayal merited an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and made her a household name.
This is a free page. This page contains 200 words. This
biography contains 1,992 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Meryl Louise Streep Access Pass.
