15 Actors Who Insisted On Changing The Script

These days, Meryl Streep's name showing up at the Academy Awards ceremony is nothing to bat an eyelash at, but naturally, there was a first time. For the 29-year-old Streep, her 1980 Oscar win for "Kramer vs. Kramer" was a career-defining moment — and one that might not have occurred had she not been so persistent on getting the character right.

As noted in an interview with Vanity Fair, the set of "Kramer vs. Kramer" was a notoriously treacherous battleground between Streep and her co-star Dustin Hoffman. This was especially true when Streep began changing scenes on set. In one instance, she insisted the dramatic sequence in a diner be restructured. In order to both make the narrative flow better and to give her character, Joana, more agency and self-determination, Streep suggested that Joana should explain why she left her family before asking for custody of their son. Director Robert Benton agreed, while Hoffman, according to Vanity Fair, reportedly said, "Meryl, why don't you stop carrying the flag for feminism and just act the scene?" He later improvised his own moment wherein he smashed a glass on a table without letting Streep know, both frightening her and getting glass on her in the process. We'd like to think that kind of behavior wouldn't fly these days.

Although not done on her insistence, but on behalf of the director, Streep's biggest contribution to the "Kramer vs. Kramer" script was in a courtroom scene where she delivers an emotionally devastating monologue. Benton had asked her to write the monologue herself and Streep did, knocking it out of the park and perhaps even winning the Oscar for that very scene.