The actress, who is being honored by the Coolidge, tells it like it is. If you’re Meryl Streep, you probably mull over more honors in a day than most people accept in a lifetime. “Please let us give you the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award,” a typical request might plead. Or, “Dear Hollywood Legend: Won’t you be our Catfish Festival Queen?” You’re always flattered, of course. But a lot of the time, particularly when you’re known to loathe events that bind you in couture and worship you as though you’re dead, people understand if you politely decline. The most-nominated actor in Academy Awards history can’t be expected to accommodate the invitation of a small independent cinema in Brookline, for example. Except maybe when that theater has a friend in Susan Orlean. Yes, though it’s way too late to buy a ticket if you don’t already have one, the Coolidge Corner Theatre will play host to Streep Wednesday and Thursday in celebration of its third annual Coolidge Award. Her arrival here caps weeks of educational seminars and retrospective screenings, and the sold-out two-day festivities include a star-studded panel discussion of 2002’s “Adaptation,” a sneak peek at the Robert Altman-directed “A Prairie Home Companion,” and a gala awards ceremony to be attended by the likes of Altman, Kevin Kline, Chris Cooper, Charlie Kaufman, John C. Reilly, Robert Brustein, and Janet Maslin.

Orlean, whose book “The Orchid Thief” loosely inspired Kaufman’s screenplay for “Adaptation,” starring Streep, is an honorary adviser to the Coolidge Award program. And though she’s careful about soliciting favors from famous folks she’s tight with, the writer says she didn’t hesitate to talk up this award, created to honor exceptional moviemaking talents such as Chinese director Zhang Yimou and Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. “You feel some responsibility about not chasing people like her down every time someone suggests ‘Boy, it would be kind of neat to have Meryl Streep at my kid’s bar mitzvah,’ ” Orlean said by phone from her Boston loft. “This was one I felt proud to present to her. . . . [It] emphasizes the joy and intelligent examination of films rather than being a celebrity thing.” We all know La Streep doesn’t go in much for celebrity things. At 56, she defies diva characterizations, courts the limelight as little as possible, and has been married to sculptor Don Gummer for 27 consecutive years. Environmentally conscious to a fault (remember her controversial crusade against the chemical Alar?), this New Jersey-born, Vassar- and Yale-educated mother of four turned down the Coolidge’s offer of a limo in favor of being ferried around town in a Prius. Some people call her performances cold, but when she spoke to us by phone recently while frantically in the middle of changing residences in New York, she was gracious, good-humored, articulate, and occasionally salty – chatting amiably about everything from past works to “The Devil Wears Prada,” the craft of acting, and the mixed bag of being Meryl. We found her warm and interesting, which is not at all the same thing as famous. Plus, good for parties, she has almost as many kinds of laughs as she has accents.

The Coolidge’s retrospective includes films like “The Deer Hunter” and “Sophie’s Choice.”If you were programming your own retrospective, what movies would be must-haves?

A: All of them! Ha! I really don’t know. . . . I certainly would include “A Cry in the Dark” and “Ironweed” and “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Adaptation.”

Not “She-Devil”? Actually, that run of comedies you had in the late ’80s and early ’90s lent itself to a Coolidge seminar. Have there been times when you purposely chose to lighten things up?

A: They always say that, but in the string of comedies there was always, you know, “The House of the Spirits” – which wasn’t that funny – and things like “The River Wild.”

Yeah, people like me are always looking for through lines.

A: People really have a hard time understanding that we’re not in control of our lives. Imagine if someone were writing about your life and saying you picked those events…. I’ve never run a production company or been in charge of finding material. I’ve just been available to certain things when I wasn’t pregnant.

Is it writing that usually sells you on a part?

A: Yes, and also over time I began to see – because I came from plays and I didn’t immediately pick up on the inchoate power of film – that you have to imagine that the director will make the frame say what the words are not. One really good example of that is “A Prairie Home Companion” [which opens in June]. . . . It’s more than what it seems. Like a poem.

Is that what you’re looking for?

A: I’m looking for exercise and passion and laughs and anger – all the things I always was looking for. Just something that matters. I’m not looking for a specific role – to play a nun or a baby or something – though I will if someone has a good script. [Cackle.]

Can’t you pretty much have any part you want at this point?

A: I don’t know what that means. I can’t play anything that is meant for Reese Witherspoon [snort], but there’s lots of interesting women’s stories to be told.

More than before?

A: Definitely, because now these niche markets have opened up. They’ve figured out that there are many more kinds of people than the ones who need to see something blown up in the first eight seconds. Now they just have to figure out how to distribute the films properly.

In the biopic of your life, who should play you?

A: [Giggle] Sarah Jones.

I recently interviewed Gong Li, who’s sometimes called the Meryl Streep of China…

A: Oh, she’d be all right, too! They’d have to put a nose on her, though.

Then maybe in China they would call you the Gong Li of…

A: New Jersey! Hahaha!

You’re arguably the top actress in Hollywood, yet you’ve managed to avoid being a typical movie star. I think everybody wonders how you’ve kept your balance.

A: Probably it has to do with Don Gummer and all the other Gummers. But it also has to do with the fact that I came up at a time when young actresses shared a willingness to play a lot of different kinds of parts and screw around with their images. We were not so dependent on magazine covers and the Gorgeous Factor. I’ve always been willing and sort of eager to [mess] with my image and to – even when I was young and pretty – not be young and pretty. Because I think you limit the human beings that you can represent. And also I was not interested in glamour, ever. It’s an important part of the business now; in fact, I would say it’s everything. Witness what the Oscars have become; it’s a fashion show, and the movies are second. I’m deeply bored by all that stuff. My mother said [insert halting New Jersey accent], “Why don’t you enjoy it? My god! People would give their right arm to wear this dress!” I would rather do anything but wear that dress. I’ll wear it in a movie. I’ll be her. But I don’t want to do it in real life.

Is there a burden to being Meryl Streep on set?

A: Well, sometimes there is with the younger actors. But it goes away almost immediately when I forget my lines. A hundred years ago [1975] when I was just out of Yale and had the amazing break of doing “Trelawny of the Wells” at Lincoln Center . . . I was so nervous that my top lip was moving independent of the rest of my face. It was just kind of whip, whip, whip, whip – even when I wasn’t talking, it was moving. And then [costar] Michael Tucker broke something – his sleeve caught on an ashtray and it swept off the table – and all of a sudden we were located in the world of this room… Because the only thing that matters in acting is what you really feel, smell, touch, and hear. All the outside stuff generally goes away within the first half-hour.

So, that’s you up there? You’re not slipping into someone else’s skin to do the role?

A: It feels like me. It feels like it’s happening to me.

Besides your reputation for extensive preparation, what do you think sets you apart as an actress?

A: Oh god. My weight? [Snicker.]

Well, maybe in the case of “The Devil Wears Prada.” Did you slim down for the film [due out this summer], or is that just catty chat-room banter?

A: No, I did, but not that much. I lost 7 pounds.

Some people are wondering if you’re bitchy enough to play that role.

A: They’ll be surprised. But it’s an interesting subject. People really do line up to go after the women who are powerful – Hillary, Martha, lots of other people – with a very special little bag of arrows.

Why do you think that is?

A: That’s what I hope people will wonder after they see the movie.

OK, let me rephrase my original question: What’s the difference between a good actor and a great actor?

A: I guess willingness to take risks and go out on a limb and make a fool of yourself. I mean, I love that my reputation is for extensive preparation, but I’m probably the laziest and least prepared of a lot of actors I’ve worked with.

Really?

A: Yeah. But nobody wants to believe that, so that’s fine.

Probably because you seem super confident, and it generally takes a lot of work to pull off something so seemingly effortless as that hilarious introduction you and Lily Tomlin gave to Altman at this year’s Oscars.

A: We were the biggest bag of raw nerves; we were pathetic. We rehearsed it one way and then completely changed it in the morning because we called each other up, both wildly insecure. . . . Oh god. I had to go lie down for a week after that.

So to those who say you’re a perfectionist and a walking accent machine, you say?

A: Yawn. I don’t say anything. I’m just trying to do my work and do it well. . . . I will admit that if I’m playing someone from Denmark, I do not come in with my New Jersey accent. It is true. Such a high standard I hold myself to. [Sarcastic chuckle.]

Is acting important?

A: Oh, it’s wildly overvalued, acting. Unfortunately we’re never going to have the Academy Awards of writing. The dresses will be so bad.

Still, you’re proud to be an actor?

A: I’m very proud of the profession when I see other people do it. When I see certain performances, I think, “I do that too. I’m part of that family of people who do this mysterious thing.” I can’t hold onto it and certainly don’t feel I deserve all the tributes that have been hurled my way, but there’s something in it that must have to do with what people want or need or get from actors. I think it has to do with our common humanity – everything going back through Charlemagne to East Africa. We all share the same DNA and it wakes up in certain moments when we watch performances and we join to disparate characters and events. It’s kind of this throbbing feeling that we’re all in it together.