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 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