Meryl Streep says her portrayal of Julia Child in Julie & Julia is less an impersonation than an idealized version of the late chef’s famed joie de vivre.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Meryl Streep says that nailing the role of Julia Child in the film Julie & Julia wasn’t so much a matter of imitating the late celebrated chef’s sing-songy high voice, as capturing her incredible spirit through another real-life person much closer to the actress.

“Everybody can sort of pull that, ‘Bon apetit!’ out,” said Streep, 60, widely considered the great living actress, with 15 Oscar nominations and two wins.

“When (writer-director) Nora (Ephron) gave me the script, I thought it was an opportunity to not impersonate Julia Child, or Julie Powell’s idea of her, which is really what I’m doing. I’m doing an idealized version, but I was also doing an idealized version of my mother, who had a similar joie de vivre — an undeniable sense of how to enjoy her life. And every room she walked into, she made brighter, she really was something. So this is my little homage to that spirit. And that’s more than what I was doing than actually Julia Child.”

Not that Streep’s mother was a great cook by any means.

“My mother’s motto was, ‘If it’s not done in 20 minutes, it’s not dinner,’ ” Streep told reporters with a smile. “She had lots of things that she wanted to do, and cooking was not one of them.”

Julie & Julia, which opens in theatres Friday, is basically two films in one — told through the eyes of two real-life women, in two different times, in two different cities.

Streep plays the middle-aged Child, stationed with her husband (played wonderfully by Stanley Tucci) in late-’40s Paris, where she becomes the first American woman to enroll at the Cordon Bleu cooking school.

Amy Adams plays fledgling writer Julie Powell in post-9/11 New York City, who blogs about her efforts to recreate all 524 recipes in Child’s landmark 1961 cook book, Mastering The Art of French Cooking.

Streep, who knew Tucci personally and had worked with him previously in The Devil Wears Prada, says their on-screen relationship as a loving, supportive couple was easy to portray. It also helped when Ephron took both actors in costume to the recreation of the Child’s Parisian apartment before filming began.

“In isolation (in your Winnebego) you kind of have a hard time convincing yourself you are who you say you are,” Streep said. “But when you walk into this world and the light comes in a certain way, and there’s the landscape of Paris ... it all actually came together before we had to actually (do it). That was a big day.”

Streep’s next movie is a romantic comedy, due on Christmas Day, called It’s Complicated opposite Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, and directed by Nancy Meyers.

After two box-office hits with Mamma Mia! and The Devil Wears Prada, Streep agrees that she has been on a roll.

“I seem to have (had) more (choices) in the past five years than I had in the previous five years, maybe, but I really don’t know why that is. Part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that there are more women executives making decisions,” she said.

Streep admitted the biggest hurdle she had when she was just starting out as an actress was committing to it as a career. Her first film was a small role in 1977’s Julia before breaking through in 1978’s The Deer Hunter, for which she garnered her first Oscar nomination.

“I thought it was sort of silly and vain, acting — even though it was the most fun thing that I’ve ever done and it remains being that. Ergo, it can’t be good for me,” said Streep, who attended the Yale School of Drama.

Streep said she doesn’t pay attention to the accolades that come her way and considers herself “just another working actor.”

“I’ve been unemployed more than I’ve been working because of the nature of what we do. We just have a lot of down time,” she said. “I just take it as every day is a miracle, and I’m really glad that I’m still working and people are not sick of me. Even I’m sick of me, a little bit.”

She added that if she ever does get a thick head about her acting career, she just has to go on the Internet.

“Fortunately, the blogosphere provides you with all the other side of the accolades. Just sign on and get humble,” Streep said with a laugh.

Amy Adams: Streep ‘raised the stakes’

Amy Adams co-starred with Meryl Streep in Doubt but doesn’t have any scenes with her in Julie & Julia, even though the two actresses are the film’s co-stars.

That doesn’t mean Adams, who plays real-life New Yorker Julie Powell — who blogged about her year-long journey to recreate all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s 1961 cook book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking — wasn’t aware of what Streep was cooking up (pun intended) with her portrayal of the cooking guru Child.

“It’s Meryl, so you know it’s going to be fantastic,” Adams said at a news conference. “When we sat down to the table read, we were told it was going to be really informal, just a couple of people. It wasn’t. It was like 50 to 75 people in a room, and in walks Meryl. She’d just come from a wig fitting and she’s in the Julia Child wig. And I think, even after working with her, and experiencing her brilliance and her work ethic, to see what she brought to the role of Julia Child in that table read — that was something I definitely had in my mind when we were working. It did raise the stakes.”

Added Chris Messina, who plays Powell’s husband, Eric, in the film, “She had the wig, she had these tall, tall heels. She was super tall. She had the voice. In my opinion, she was ready to shoot. She’s awesome. She’s the greatest we have.”

Adams never met the real-life Powell in person but says the movie helped her better understand “the meditative effects of cooking. Not just sort of having to put a meal together, but really enjoying the process of cooking for friends and family.”

She describes herself as “a decent cook. I wouldn’t call myself a good cook. I can follow a recipe but sometimes my improvisation gets me in trouble. I’m creative, it’s just that it doesn’t always turn out that well. I like hot sauce, so everything ends up being a little too spicy.”

Adams currently is shooting The Fighter, playing Mickey Rourke’s girlfriend.

jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca

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