Film and culinary enthusiasts are mourning the loss of a home cook who tried to master the art of French cooking.
Julie Powell, the food blogger played by Amy Adams in the film Julie & Julia, died at age 49 in her New York residence Oct. 26, per The New York Times. According to her husband, Eric Powell, Julie’s cause of death was cardiac arrest.
Her passing comes about 20 years after Julie changed the trajectory of her life—and arguably the trajectory of food blogging—back in 2002 when she decided to set off on a mission to cook all 524 recipes listed in Julia Child‘s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. Julie documented this experiment in her blog “The Julie/Julia Project”—but that was just the beginning.
Julie eventually turned her blog into the book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which was published in 2005. And in 2009, the book was adapted into the movie Julie & Julia, a film written and directed by Nora Ephron which co-starred Meryl Streep as Julia. The movie intertwined the stories of both Julie’s and Julia’s culinary experience.