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 options available to an actress in her forties. Streep commented that she had limited her options by her preference to work in Los Angeles, close to her family, a situation that she had anticipated in a 1981 interview when she commented, "By the time an actress hits her mid-forties, no one's interested in her anymore. And if you want to fit a couple of babies into that schedule as well, you've got to pick your parts with great care." At the Screen Actor's Guild National Women's Conference in 1990, Streep keynoted the first national event, emphasizing the decline in women's