"Julie & Julia," which opens Friday, chronicles the year Powell, portrayed by Amy Adams, cooked and blogged her way through Julia Child's "The Art of Mastering French Cooking," the book that revolutionized American cooking in the 1960s. Simultaneously, the film recreates Child's culinary beginnings in Paris, as based on her memoir "My Life in France."
Powell's blog attracted a substantial following and led to her best-selling 2005 memoir, "Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen." (Recent printings have been retitled "Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.") Her second book, "Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession," will be published in December.
The side-by-side storytelling structure, mouthwatering recipes and delightful performances by Adams and Streep make the film a treat. But for Powell, it's a little odd, too.
"All these events and things that I said and things that happened to me are definitely right there on the big screen," Powell said, "And just having Amy Adams pick up the phone and say, 'This is Julie Powell,' is strange."
Cooking was always a passion of Powell's, though she never had formal training. Dissatisfied with her secretarial job, she decided one night that she would cook her way through Child's 524-recipe book. The next morning, she bought the ingredients for the first recipe.
"I felt like I had nothing that was my own, so this project was a way for me to cut out a portion of my life that was for me," she said.
Most nights, Powell would leave work and shop for ingredients, getting home between 7 and 9 p.m. She would cook for two to three hours, eat and then crash.
Powell didn't just cook Julia's recipes, she did extensive research on the legendary chef, reading all Child's memoirs and letters. Powell's blog followers weren't always happy to hear about their culinary hero's more human side.
