Before Ina, before Rachel, before Emeril, there was Julia, the woman who forever changed the way America cooks. But in 1948, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) was just an American woman living in France.  Her husband's job had brought them to Paris, and she yearned for something to do.

Fifty years later, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is stuck.  Pushing 30, living in Queens and working in a cubicle as her friends achieve greatness, she thinks-up a seemingly insane plan to channel her energy. Julie decides to spend a year cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which Child co-wrote with Louise Bertholle and Simone Beck) – and write a blog about her experiences.

Director-writer-producer Nora Ephron melds these two remarkable true stories into a comedy that combines passion, obsession and butter to achieve your dreams.  

“It’s about love, it’s about marriage, it’s about changing your life,” says Ephron of the themes that motivated her to make Julie & Julia. “I’m obsessed with food, but there were at least eight other reasons why I had to do it, like doing things you care about and finding happiness through that.”

The film takes the remarkable approach of adapting and interweaving two memoirs: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme. My Life in France is Child’s own story of her years in post-World War II Paris as the wife of American foreign-service employee Paul Child, when she was able to turn her love for French cooking into a dedicated mission to spread its pleasures to American households. After becoming the first American woman to study at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school, she popularized French cuisine in America by co-writing the English-language cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book’s popularity led to a cooking show career that made her a household name in the United States.

“When you talk about passion, Julia Child didn’t just have it for her husband or cooking, she had a passion for living,” says Streep. “Real, true joie de vivre. She loved being alive, and that’s inspirational in and of itself.”

A half-century later, in 2002, New Yorker Julie Powell was nearing 30, dissatisfied as a writer and working for an organization devoted to rebuilding the World Trade Center. She decided to cook her way through Child’s masterpiece – 524 recipes in 365 days – and chronicle her efforts in a blog.

Today blogging is a part of everyday life, but when Powell began her blogs she was one of the few who used the outlet. Powell’s writings became so popular that, like Child, she got her own culinary adventure published: Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously in 2005.  But before Powell

“Julie was really one of the first bloggers to sort of break out of the tiny orbit that some of these people live in,” producer Eric Steel explains. “She had a real audience. By the time I found her, she had thousands of people reading her blog every day.”

The project then attracted the interest of writer/director Nora Ephron. 

“As soon as I heard the idea, I thought, ‘Oh, I have to do that,’” says Ephron.  “In 1962 or so, when I first moved to New York, everybody was buying a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking – it was a way of saying you were intelligent and therefore you were going to cook in a way that a smart person was going to cook.  So Julia Child became an imaginary friend for me and for the millions of women who bought this cookbook, and, years later, I think the same thing was true for Julie Powell.”

Julie Powell is overwhelmed by the success of her book and now movie have received and never expected actresses like Streep and Adams to be portraying her on the big screen. 

“They’ve made a beautiful movie, a movie about marriage, and being brave, and creating yourself.  This has all been an amazing experience,” Powell said.