Already a Broadway star in revered revivals of Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams (and an Emmy winner for the earnest 1978 miniseries Holocaust), Streep steps warily into movies but nonetheless finds immediate success. The Deer Hunter (1978), a small role, is her first Oscar nomination, but it is in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), playing a complex Manhattanite who chooses independence over motherhood, that she shows her way with tricky material.
