CORRECTION APPENDED

Thirteen-time Oscar nominee Meryl Streep will come to Brookline this April to receive the Coolidge Award.

The annual accolade, bestowed by the local Coolidge Corner Theatre, one of the few Art Deco movie palaces left in the nation, highlights a breakthrough contributor in a particular field of cinema.

“One of our goals...is to mix it up every year,” Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Director Clinton McClung said yesterday. Since its 2004 inception, the award has gone to Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Now, the theatre has recognized the acting profession.

“Meryl Streep was at the top of our list,” McClung said.

A series of Streep-centered seminars and screenings will lead up to the award ceremony on April 5. The event will feature a preview showing of Robert Altman’s upcoming film “A Prairie Home Companion,” based on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio show. Streep plays a country music diva, joined by an eclectic group of actors including pop-princess Lindsay Lohan and comedic staple Lily Tomlin.

“It’s great to see [Streep] in a big ensemble, and there are few ensemble casts that are trans-generational,” Director of Undergraduate Studies for Film Studies J.D. Connor ’92 said.

Connor, who led a film seminar for the Coolidge on Streep’s role in adapted films, applauded her versatility.

Streep at once pays homage to the original literary character while embodying the persona in the adapted screenplay, he said.

“I have real respect for what she does,” Connor said, adding that her intelligence carried through every performance. “The only drawback is that she takes all the good parts.”

Streep, a Yale School of Drama graduate, has netted two Academy Awards, including best actress for her 1983 role in “Sophie’s Choice.”

More recently, she earned an Emmy for her role in made-for-television movie “Angels in America.” Streep has also tackled a wide range of roles, from a lesbian divorcée in “Manhattan” to Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.”

“She has a gift for making you infatuated with every character she plays,” wrote Bass Professor of English and American Literature Louis Menand, a self-proclaimed “big fan” of Streep.

“After I saw her play Carrie Fisher in the movie version of Fisher’s life story, Postcards from the Edge, I decided that I would be willing to have a sex-change operation if she would play me in a movie version of my life story,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The award hopes to showcase the Coolidge Corner Theatre as a unique cinematic center, McClung said.

Catering to mainstream tastes as well as more artistic inclinations, the non-profit institution focuses on only the “highest quality films,” McClung said.

“Rather than just a cinema, we think of ourselves as a cinema arts center,” McClung said, citing the Academy Award best picture winners that have played alongside family films, live-band movies, and sing-along “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes at midnight.

“We try to think outside the norm. We’re trying to turn movies into the entertainment they should be rather than just profit driven.”

—Staff writer Lindsay A. Maizel can be reached at lmaizel@fas.harvard.edu.

Correction: The original article incorrectly stated that the actress Maryl Streep played the role of Virginia Woolf in the movie The Hours. In fact, she played the role of Clarissa Vaughan.