There might not be anyone who takes 2006 Coolidge Award recipient Meryl Streep less seriously than 2006 Coolidge Award recipient Meryl Streep.

During a panel discussion of her 2002 film Adaptation at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theater, the audience seemed shocked by Streep’s modest reply that she worried about making the film because she initially feared the part was written to mock her.

When an audience member asked Streep if she felt any pressure in making such a quirky film, she replied, “Well, not really, you know, because I’ve become Meryl Streep,” sarcastically emphasizing her name to simultaneously acknowledge and deflate her revered image. “But I want to protect and preserve that little thing that sits under that bell jar, which is actually me.”

Indeed, the actual Streep seems unfazed by this award, which honors “an artist whose body of work challenges us, breaks the boundaries of the medium, and inspires us.” It is likely she wasn’t fazed by her American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award either, nor by her record 13 Academy Award nominations.

“This award is really celebrating not so much me [but] a small independent arts theater, and that creature has to be preserved,” she said, referring to the Coolidge, one of the country’s few remaining art houses. “I think it’s a really important thing and I’m proud to help out.”

For that cause, Streep brought along some friends, including legendary filmmaker Robert Altman, who himself received a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Oscars and directed Streep’s newest film, A Prairie Home Companion. Journalist Susan Orlean, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, actor Chris Cooper and her Prairie co-stars Kevin Kline and John C. Reilly also joined her.

“We shot it all at once, with these long kind of meandering takes. And we all thought, ‘Surely, he’ll say cut soon,'” Streep joked, referring to Altman’s maverick approach to filming, which often involved shooting ten pages of script in a single take with up to four cameras. “But I just thought it was bravado directing because … he was unafraid and it made us unafraid.”

The final product, which was screened at the Coolidge as part of the festivities, is the sort of character-driven, vibrantly idiosyncratic film that Streep shines in and Altman excels at. Whether or not it will bring the actress a fourteenth Oscar nomination remains to be seen, but at least we know the success won’t go to her head.