Julie Powell has passed away. The writer, whose blog inspired the 2009 film Julie & Julia, died on October 26 in her Olivebridge, New York, home. She was 49 years old.
Eric Powell informed the newspaper that his wife died of cardiac arrest after they married in 1998 after meeting in high school.
Powell began writing in 2002, as she was approaching her 30th birthday and had no solid professional prospects, about her effort to prepare all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 in one year.
The Julie/Julia Project, written for Salon.com, quickly went viral. Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously was published in 2005 as a book. Four years later, Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia was released, featuring Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell.
“I’ve always found that when you’re stuck or in a rut, you have to do something crazy that’s just for you,” Powell told ET at the premiere of Julie & Julia. “It doesn’t have to make any sense… to anyone else. If everyone is telling you, ‘That’s crazy. Don’t do that,’ you may be onto something.”
“Follow the voice in your head,” she added, “because that’s the one that’s leading you where you need to be.”
Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, Powell’s second novel, was published in 2009.
Powell leaves behind her husband, Eric Powell, her brother, Jordan Foster, and her parents, John and Kay Foster.