Julie Powell, who inspired the film Julie & Julia, dies at 49

Julie Powell, who found fame with an early food blog that was turned into a best-selling book and a hit movie, has died at the age of 49.

In 2002, Powell challenged herself to cook all 524 dishes in a recipe book by TV chef Julia Child in 365 days as a distraction from her day job.

The resulting blog gained a large following and a book came out in 2005.

She was played by Amy Adams in a 2009 film version, titled Julie & Julia, written and directed by Nora Ephron.

Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Child.

Powell fell in love with Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 when she would steal it out of her mother’s pantry as a child.

She came across it again when visiting her parents at the age of 29.

At the time, she was depressed and working for the Manhattan Development Corporation after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

“I got a lot of calls from residents and relatives of people who had died,” she told the BBC World Service’s Outlook programme in 2020.

“I got calls from people who had contracted lung diseases after being down there at 9/11, and I often didn’t know where to send them. So I would just listen to them, and some of them were crazy, and some of them were not. But all of them were looking for help in a way that we were not always equipped to give.

“So that was what I was doing every day and it makes a person feel fairly useless and incapable.”

She decided to work her way through Child’s opus, often tackling multiple recipes a day in the tiny apartment she shared with her husband Eric – and she documented the personal and domestic challenges as well as the culinary ones.

“I had to balance my mixer on the trash can and my food processor on some other thing,” she said. “There was a lot of jumping over cords and almost tripping on stuff that was stacked on the floor.

“There were quite a few dinners at 11pm or midnight. The fridge was always a nightmare. There were always leftovers, and sometimes like a big hunk of pig’s leg just sort of stuck in there.”

There were “lots of times when I kind of lost my mind a bit”, she added.

“Maybe in April, I had a breakdown that involved putting watercress through a food mill that wasn’t working properly, and I absolutely lost it. I threw the food mill down, there’s watercress everywhere, I was sobbing.”

But she continued with what she called the Julie/Julia Project, which was published on Salon.com and soon attracted attention from readers and the media.

Child herself, though, was less impressed, and told a journalist that she felt Powell’s project was exploitative.

“Which of course is extremely painful to hear,” Powell said. “The last thing in my head would be to exploit her in any way. I was trying to say something about how much she meant to me and how much she had improved me. But at the same time, I totally get it.”

After the film version came out, Powell admitted the real Julie was “not as sweet as the movie Julie” played by Adams, and that she was even more neurotic.

Eric Powell told the New York Times her cause of death was a heart attack, which her brother-in-law Ethan Powell told the Los Angeles Times was caused by a heart arrhythmia, or heart rhythm problems. On Twitter last week, she had complained of feeling ill.

Those paying tribute included fellow New York food blogger Deb Perelman, known for her Smitten Kitchen recipes.

Powell’s book editor Judy Clain, editor-in-chief of publisher Little, Brown, told the New York Times: ”She had so much talent and emotional intelligence. I only wish she could have found the next thing.”

Powell did go on to write for food magazines and publish another book, 2009’s Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, which delved into extramarital affairs both she and her husband had, as well as her apprenticeship in a butcher’s shop.