Who Plays Who?

Meryl Streep Amy Adams Stanley Tucci Chris Messina Mary Kay Place Linda Emond Helen Carey Mary Lynn Rajskub Jane Lynch Joan Juliet Buck Crystal Noelle George Bartenieff Vanessa Ferlito Casey Wilson Jillian Bach Andrew Garman Michael Brian Dunn Remak Ramsay Diane Kagan Pamela Stewart Jeff Brooks Frances Sternhagen Brooks Ashmanskas

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Julia Child Julie Powell Paul Child Eric Powell Voice of Julie's Mom Simone Beck Louisette Bertholle Sarah Dorothy McWilliams Madame Brassart Ernestine Chef Max Bugnard Cassie Regina Annabelle John O'Brien Ivan Cousins John McWilliams Phila McWilliams Instructor at Le Cordon Bleu Minister Irma Rombauer Mr Misher

What Do The Critics Say

"Streep and Tucci give us a mature sizzle, sexy and endearing. Like chocolate and peanut butter, or champagne and strawberries: they're fabulous alone, but together; wow, the combination's irresistible." Kimberly Gadette INDIE MOVIES ONLINE "Meryl Streep is terrific. She will be again the darling of the award show season." Ben Lyons AT THE MOVIES "Meryl Streep as the daffy American chef Julia Child nails her role with perfection." Dennis Schwartz OZUS' WORLD MOVIE REVIEWS "Julie & Julia is one of the gentlest, most charming American movies of the past decade." David Denby NEW YORKER "Léger et doux comme une crème brûlée (Light and sweet as a creme brulee)." Harvey S. Karten COMPUSERVE "Ephron does the smart thing in Julie & Julia and lets Streep carry the day." Stephanie Zacharek SALON.COM "Few movies are as delightful as Julie & Julia." Mick LaSalle SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "Child's letters home are vivacious, illustrating her generosity and wit, her resolve and sense of humor." Cynthia Fuchs POP MATTERS "This is one lip-smacking, celestially aromatic, drop-dead delicious movie." Robert W. Butler KANSAS CITY STAR "Meryl Streep is utterly magnifique in the story of her life, which parallels the travails of modern-day writer Julie Powell (the versatile Amy Adams). Think of it like a good soufflé: deliciously sweet and airy without the cloying aftertaste. You'll want more." Stella Papamichael DIGITAL SPY

"Julie & Julia features two dramatically inert story lines and two firecracker actresses. Whipped up by Nora Ephron based on the lives of two real women, weaves a pair of mini biographies together without much narrative heft. But the actresses rally time and time again to make the movie a qualified delight. Ephron the screenwriter generously spreads the laughter and emotional truths, giving shape to each character and letting the actresses do the rest." Christian Toto WHAT WOULD TOTO WATCH "A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. Nora Ephron whips up something wonderful in 'Julie & Julia.' Bon appétit, indeed." Kenneth Turan LOS ANGELES TIMES "It's a light and entertaining treat, with winning performances, sharp writing and some happy surprises." Claudia Puig USA TODAY "Oh, yum! A delectable new entry in the generally gentle, genial and tantalising mini-genre of food movies. The most pleasant surprise is Nora Ephron’s direction. Deliciously funny and warming fare, for which the amazing Meryl deserves her ridiculously overdue third Oscar." EMPIRE MAGAZINE "Presiding over the film's double narrative is writer-director Nora Ephron, who knows about storytelling and food: her autobiographical novel, "Heartburn" (which she adapted for the screen, with Streep in the lead), was a tale of sexual betrayal punctuated by recipes. What makes this film memorable and pleasurable, above all, is the ebullient performance of Meryl Streep as Julia Child, unlikely culinary trailblazer and TV star." Philippa Hawker THE AGE "The most welcome and surprising thing about "Julie & Julia" is how Ephron rescues Child from the stodgy, pearls-bedecked public character she later became, and presents her as a woman of strong appetites, especially when it came to her love affair with Paul. Streep and Tucci enjoy a terrific, infectious onscreen chemistry as soul mates for whom food and entertaining were part of one long, sensuous continuum." Ann Hornaday WASHINGTON POST

The Inside Story "It’s about love, it’s about marriage, it’s about changing your life," says Nora Ephron ("This Is My Life") 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." "What unites these two stories is passion," says producer Laurence Mark ("I, Robot"). "ulie Powell and Julia Child both discovered a passion: in each case, a passion for food, that got them through tough or uncertain times. The movie is also about marriage: how it’s a delicate balancing act. Julie and Julia have both somehow figured this out, and no matter the ups and downs, they’re crazy about their spouses and their spouses are crazy about them." The film takes the remarkable approach of adapting and interweaving two celebrated 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 ardor 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. More than anyone else, Child steered American eaters away from the canned, the frozen and the processed and into food that was fresh, flavorful and made with unbridled joy, a wonderful metaphor for approaching life. "When you talk about passion, Julia Child didn’t just have it for her husband or cooking, she had a passion for living," says two time Oscar ® (1980 & '03) winner Meryl 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 thirty, dissatisfied as a writer, and facing an emotionally depleting day job working for an organization devoted to rebuilding the World Trade Centre site after 9/11 and helping displaced residents resettle. Spurred to change her life, she decided to cook her way through Child’s masterpiece: five hundred and twenty four recipes in three hundred and sixty five days days and chronicle her efforts in a blog. Today, blogging is part of the fabric of our lives, but in 2002, Powell was a blogging pioneer. "I think at the outset of this endeavor, Julie may not have realized just how ambitious it actually was. But since she was clearly getting a kick out of it, and the results were so delicious, it all became somewhat more manageable," Mark ("Riding in Cars with Boys") explained. Powell’s writings became so popular that, like Child, she got her own culinary adventure published: "Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" was released by Little Brown in 2005. But before Powell even had a book deal, producer Eric Steel ("Angela's Ashes") had taken notice of her, including in a New York Times profile written by food writer Amanda Hesser. "Julie was really one of the first bloggers to sort of break out of the tiny orbit that some of these people live in," Steel offered. "She had a real audience. By the time I found her, she had thousands of people reading her blog every day." At the same time producer Amy Robinson ("Autumn in New York") was looking to turn the love story of Julia and Paul Child into a movie. Hearing about Steel’s option on the rights to Powell’s story, Robinson proposed the two combine their narratives. The project attracted the interest of writer/director Nora Ephron, with her witty sensibility and interest in food as it relates to life, and producer Laurence Mark and executive producer Scott Rudin came on board to shepherd the project. And what was Ephron's first reaction to the idea was: "Oh, I have to do that," she recalls. "In 1962 or so, when I first moved to New York, everybody was buying a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 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." It’s no surprise that the Academy Award ® winning actress Meryl Streep ("Kramer vs Kramer" & Sophie's Choice") was the logical choice to play Julia Child. Ephron was inspired to cast Streep after running into the actress at a Shakespeare in the Park performance. Streep asked what Ephron was working on, Ephron replied, and Streep immediately went into her Child impression: "Bon Appétit!" Before it even began, the casting search was over. After she was sent the script, Streep read it and says she called Ephron immediately. "I thought it was absolutely beautiful," Streep ("The French Lieutenant's Woman") recalls. "It made me cry, the idea that what you put in front of your family, that love, those connections between people, are the real important things." As for who she was being asked to play, what galvanized the accomplished actress was Julia Child’s approach to life. "Her approach to her day was one of energy and appetite and a blanket determination not to let troubles get you down. It’s a great quality and she really had it." Julia Child was famous, and because of her height (six foot two inches) and an odd, high-pitched voice, she was a subject often impersonated: most famously by Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live"; but Streep found a way to avoid caricature in her portrayal. "My out is that I’m not really 'doing' Julia Child, I’m Julie Powell’s idea of who she was," says Streep ("Bridges of Madison County"). "So while I felt a responsibility to her memory and the legacy of the great work she did, and to the essence of her character, I didn’t feel I was replicating her." When it came to casting Julie Powell, Ephron wanted an actress who could embody a young woman’s insecurities and emotional blow-ups. She knew Amy Adams was up to the task, but she also met another major requirement for the writer/director. "Among the many things I liked about her was that I believed that she was smart enough to be a writer," says Ephron. "And she’s funny." Adams found plenty in the character of Julie Powell that spoke to her. "She’s really come to a crossroads, and she’s trying to make decisions. That was something I was very familiar with, and I don’t think it’s reflected very often in films in an honest way," 2006 Independent Spirit Award winner Adams notes. It was Streep, who suggested to Ephron that her The Devil Wears Prada co-star, two time Golden Globe winner (1999 & 2002) and two time Emmy Award winner (1999 & 2007) Stanley Tucci play the part of her onscreen husband Paul Child (15/1/1902 - 12/5/1994), the man who opened Julia’s eyes to the world of art, food and travel, nurtured her through the writing of her book, did photography and illustrations for Julia's books and ultimately cherished her rising popularity. "Paul Child was this sort of Renaissance guy," says Tucci (who played Link in "Shall We Dance"), "and he was self-taught. He never went to college. But he was a voracious reader and he was self-educated. He was ten years older than Julia, and he encouraged her." "Stanley brings this indescribable thing, which is the substance of a man; his gravitas, his love, his three-dimensional despair when he was called back to Washington, humiliated," says Streep. As for who should play Julie Powell’s supportive husband Eric, an archaeology magazine editor who becomes his wife’s primary taster on her epic kitchen journey, Ephron chose Chris Messina ("Six Feet Under"). "Eric helps Julie find direction by listening and really being in tune to what she needs," says 2006 Richard Burton Best Actor Award winner Messina. "When she starts talking about Julia Child and cooking, it’s the first time you see her character almost at peace. He picks up on that and starts improvising with her, on how they can make the project a reality." Then there was the little matter of eating. "I know that sounds so crazy to say, but Mr. Messina is a brilliant eater," says Adams ("Enchanted" & "Doubt"). "I don’t know how he does it. He eats like a man, yet he doesn’t make it look grotesque. It’s a talent." Messina revealed how he managed to do it. "After a day of lots of eating, I started to complain. Nora yelled from the other room, 'Robert De Niro would do it!' and that got me back in there and focused for another seven lobsters." To play Julia's sister Dorothy McWilliams (who in the film marries Ivan Cousins), 1990 BAFTA Film Award winner Ephron ("When Harry Met Sally") cast the incomparable Jane Lynch ("Role Models"). "Julia and Dorothy come from a liberal, joyful, exuberant mother and a father who was very stern and rather conservative," says 2008 Faith Hubley Memorial Award winner Lynch. "He was not really thrilled with this match, and he wasn’t a big fan of Julia’s marriage to Paul. He wanted his daughters to marry Republican bankers, basically. But here they were with these arty, liberal guys." Julie Powell finds added support in her culinary mission from best friend Sarah, played by comedienne and actress Mary Lynn Rajskub ("24"). "Julie has friends who are stuck up and more successful and like to rub their success in her face," says Rajskub ("Little Miss Sunshine"). "But Sarah’s relationship with Julie is more down to earth. She helps keep her grounded, calming her down and showing up to eat her food. When I read the script I was very excited, because it’s very women-centric, about food, relationships and emotional troubles, which are a lot of my favorite things." All the actors agreed that Ephron’s screenplay got at something elemental about the soul-edifying and appetite-satisfying journey of these two women. "She has such a personal attachment to these characters," says Adams. "She really fights for them, so whenever I was stuck with something, I could always turn to her. Nora is also one of the best people to go out to dinner with, because she knows exactly what to order so you get a wonderful dining experience!" "Her deftness as a writer is a great gift, how secretly she sneaks in what she’s talking about," says Streep. Production designer Mark Ricker and his crew took over two huge stages at Silvercup East Studios, across the East River from Manhattan, to build a whole series of eleven kitchen sets, most of which were period kitchens from the mid-20th century for the Julia Child scenes. “All had to be functional, working kitchens," says Ricker "And they had to have every implement that you could possibly imagine for Meryl, for Nora, for Amy." He also visited the actual apartment on Jackson Avenue, Long Island City where Julie and Eric had lived, and recreated it on the set. "When I started, I never expected that I’d have a book, or that book would be optioned, or that Nora Ephron would become attached to write and direct the movie, or that Meryl Streep and Amy Adams would be in it," says Julie Powell. "They’ve made a beautiful movie, a movie about marriage, and being brave, and creating yourself. This has all been an amazing experience." Synopsis

Before Ina, before Rachael, before Emeril, there was Julia, the woman who forever changed the way America cooks. But in 1948, Julia Child was just an American woman living in France. Her husband Paul's foreign-service job has brought them to Paris, and with her indefatigable spirit, she yearned for something to do. Fifty years later in 2002, Julie Powell is stuck. Pushing thirty, living in Queens and working in a customer service cubicle as her friends achieve stunning successes, she seizes on a seemingly insane plan to focus her energies. Julie decides to spend exactly 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. Based on two true stories, Julie & Julia intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends: until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and a mountain of butter, anything is possible.

The Verdict "Two women searching for that special 'something', discover the catalyst for a fulfilling life is food. While food dominates director/writer Nora Ephron's "Julie & Julia", cinemagoers can rest assured that it's not a film devoted soley to cooking. "Julie & Julia" is a sumptuous tale of two determined and talented women who, with the support of their respective husbands and while living decades apart, would bring pleasure to millions of Americans because of their love for food. Julia Child's consuming passion for French food would lead to her co-authoring "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and later, a television career in the U.S.A. What is even more remarkable is the story of Julie Powell, who, prior to turning thirty, unhappy with her own self-worth, undertook to cook, in one year, all of Child's recipes, and by doing so, rekindled interest in Child: introducing her to a new generation of people who had never heard of her. And, while the main focus in the film is food, love plays a huge part, especially for Julia and Paul Child who met in 1944 when they were stationed in Ceylon while working with the Office of Strategic Services. Sixty years later and just prior to her death from kidney failure, Julia's grandnephew Alex Prud'homme, would write "My Life In France". Stanley Tucci, as he was in "Shall We Dance" and "The Devil Wears Prada", gives another outstanding performance: this time as Julia's lifelong devoted husband Paul. The ever likeable Adams (cast with Streep in "Doubt"), proves with this role that she is definately a star in her own right by evoking great empathy for Powell. Towering above all and sundry is the remarkable Meryl Streep giving an Oscar worthy performance in what is one of the best films of 2009. Very recommended. 4 1/2 STARS." The Production Team

Director Screenplay Adapted from Adapted from Producers Original Music D.O.P. Film Editor Casting Production Designer Art Direction Set Decoration Costume Design

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Nora Ephron Nora Ephron "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell "My Life in France" by Julia Child & Alex Prud'homme Nora Ephron/Laurence Mark/Amy Robinson/Eric Steel Alexandre Despla t Stephen Goldblatt Richard Marks Kathy Driscoll & Francine Maisler Mark Ricker Ben Barraud Susan Bode Ann Roth

Run Time 123 minutes Rated PG [AUST] Copyright ©2009 - Sony Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2009 All Rights Reserved - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.