In 2002, Julie Powell was just an average 30-year-old New Yorker who wanted something more than a dead-end day job. She turned to a cookbook for inspiration, but it wasn't just any cookbook.

Julie decided to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and chronicle the ups and downs of her attempt in a blog. The blog was a hit, and soon Julie got a book deal to write about the experience.

Her book Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously became part of a screenplay for a new movie written and directed by the famed Nora Ephron. Oprah.com's Erin White talks with Julie about her journey through food blogging, cooking and writing and about what it's like to see her story come to life on the big screen.
Erin White: I know you've written on your blog that life has been a little surreal for you in the last few weeks. Tell me about that—what has it been like to watch your blog and life story come to life on the movie screen?

Julie Powell: It has been a gradual ramping up of surreality for quite some time. I mean, just having a book was somewhat surreal and then a movie and then Nora [Ephron] wanted to be involved and Meryl [Steep] was cast, so by the time they started filming it in the streets of my town, it becomes this bigger and bigger thing. By the time you actually sit down and watch this thing for the first time...really, surreal is the new normal. I'm oddly calm. I'm watching Amy Adams up there—this beautiful redheaded Oscar®-nominated actress—saying, "I'm Julie Powell," and I think, "Okay, I can live with that."

EW: What was your reaction to the movie?

JP: It is a lovely movie; it is so sweet. I think it is very different from my book. The Julie Powell portrayed by Amy Adams is nicer than I am—the cursing has been pared down a good little bit! And, her edges are a little bit smoother. But, she does such a lovely job, and it is such a sweet portrait of that year and of that relationship with my husband, and I just think everyone connected [with the film] did such a wonderful job.

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