Meryl Streep commenting that she played it on "automatic pilot". She performed the role of Katherine in "The Taming of the Shrew" for Shakespeare in the Park, and also played a supporting role in "Manhattan" (1979) for Woody Allen. Streep later said that Allen did not provide her with a complete script, giving her only the six pages of her own scenes, and did not permit her to improvise a word of her dialogue. In the drama "Kramer vs. Kramer", Streep was cast opposite Dustin Hoffman as an unhappily married woman who abandons her husband and child. Streep thought that the script
Meryl Streep Canby, writing for "The New York Times", noted that the film was an homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, but that one of its main weaknesses was a lack of chemistry between Streep and Scheider, concluding that Streep "is stunning, but she's not on screen anywhere near long enough". Greater success came later in the year when Streep starred in the drama "Sophie's Choice" (also 1982), portraying a Polish holocaust survivor caught in a love triangle between a young naïve writer (Peter MacNicol) and a Jewish intellectual (Kevin Kline). Streep's emotional dramatic performance and her apparent mastery of a