Well before Julia knew Eat, Pray, Love would become a feature film, she says she fell under the book's spell. After receiving a copy from her agent, Julia says she started reading.

"I hadn't heard anything about it," she says. "I got about 30 pages into it. ... And I remember putting the book down and walking over to the computer, getting on Amazon and ordering the book."

Julia sent a copy to her best friend, Paige, with a note. "It said, 'I want to be reading this book while someone I love is reading it at the same time,'" she says. "She caught up, and we sort of read it in tandem. We didn't even discuss it deeply. I just wanted to know that somewhere in the world, she knew what I knew."

While reading, Julia says she surrendered and couldn't help but put herself into the book. "It's the way that [Liz] wrote this book," she says. "It's like a bell that just keeps ringing."