Meryl Streep Actress, National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her collective work in her three film releases of 1979. Both "The Deer Hunter" and "Kramer vs. Kramer" were major commercial successes and were consecutive winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1979, Streep began workshopping "Alice in Concert", a musical version of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", with writer and composer Elizabeth Swados and director Joseph Papp; the show was put on at New York's Public Theater from December 1980. Frank Rich of "The New York
Meryl Streep self-consciously dramatic and surface showy of her career" but she "adds a level of honesty and reality that makes [her performance] one of her most moving". Streep portrayed Roberta Guaspari, a real-life New Yorker who found passion and enlightenment teaching violin to the inner-city kids of East Harlem, in the music drama "Music of the Heart" (1999). Streep replaced singer Madonna, who left the project before filming began due to creative differences with director Wes Craven. Required to perform on the violin, Streep went through two months of intense training, five to six hours a day. Streep received nominations for