Meryl Streep in her impersonation of characters, "subsuming herself into them, rather than personifying them". In her early roles such as "Manhattan" and "Kramer vs. Kramer", she was compared to both Diane Keaton and Jill Clayburgh, in that her characters were unsympathetic, which Streep has attributed to the tendency to be drawn to playing women who are difficult to like and lack empathy. Streep has stated that many consider her to be a technical actor, but she professed that it comes down to her love of reading the initial script, adding, "I come ready and I don't want to screw around and
Meryl Streep citing "exhaustion" initially, although it was later revealed that there was a dispute over her salary. By the end of the decade, Streep actively looked to star in a comedy. She found the role in "She-Devil" (1989), a satire that parodied societal obsession with beauty and cosmetic surgery, in which she played a glamorous writer. Though the film was not a success, Richard Corliss of "Time" wrote that Streep was the "one reason" to see it, and observed that it marked a departure from the dramatic roles she was known to play. Reacting to her string of poorly received films,