Meryl Streep on screen and stage Deer Hunter" (1978) proved to be a breakthrough for Streep and she received her first Academy Award nomination for it. She won the award the following year for playing a troubled wife in the top-grossing drama "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979). Also in 1978, Streep played a German married to a Jew in Nazi Germany in the television miniseries "Holocaust", which earned her the Emmy Award for Best Actress. Streep established herself as a leading Hollywood actress in the 1980s. She played dual roles in the period drama "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), and starred as a Polish Holocaust survivor in
Meryl Streep Actress. Streep has said of perfecting the Australian accent in the film: "I had to study a little bit for Australian because it's not dissimilar [to American], so it's like coming from Italian to Spanish. You get a little mixed up." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" referred to her performance as "another stunning performance", played with "the kind of virtuosity that seems to re-define the possibilities of screen acting". In 1989, Streep lobbied to play the lead role in Oliver Stone's adaption of the play "Evita", but two months before filming was due to commence, she dropped out,