Q: Was there a challenge of doing an impersonation that might veer into parody because sh e's such a character?

MERYL: Well, I bet everybody in this room could do their version of Julia Child. To everybody that voice was so familiar and then how do we know whether we're doing her or Dan Aykroyd's version of her. Everyone can pull that 'bon appetit' out there. When Nora gave me the script I just thought that it was so, so beautifully written. I thought that it was an opportunity to not impersonate Julia Child, but to do a couple of things. One, for me embodying her or Julie Powell's idea of her which is 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. Every room she walked into she made brighter. I mean, she was really something. I have a good deal of my father in me which is another kind of sensibility, but I really, all my life, wanted to be more like my mother. So this is my little homage to that spirit. That's more what I was doing than actually Julia Child.

Q: Now that you're considered a box office star after two enormous hits, has that changed anything about the choices you make?

MERYL: I seem to have more choices in the last five years than in the previous five years. I really don't know why that is, but part of me thinks it has to do with the fact that there are more women executives making decisions because everything starts with what gets made and where the money comes from. So I'm sure that they've had more to do with that really than I have.

Q: What would you like to have asked Julia or Paul that you, obviously, didn't get the chance to?

MERYL: Well, I'd like to ask them how they lived so long eating what they ate. I'm convinced that they both had two livers. I'd just be curious. I can't say that I know what I would've asked them, but what I would've liked to have done is watch the interaction between the two of them in that little kitchen, either in Paris or in Boston, because to me that was the most interesting thing. When you see that kitchen, we recreated it in the film, it was so casual and really very intimate. I would've just liked to have watch that, watch them put together a meal. That would've been a great thing.

Q: The romance between Julia and Paul is so dynamic and great in this film. It's so touching to see what you're doing. What did you and Stanley [Tucci] do to create that kind of chemistry, this organic looking relationship?

MERYL: Well, Stanley and I are often on opposite sides in a very famous charades game every Christmas. We've been at each other's throats like married people for a really long time, many years [laughs]. We knew each other in that way and I just sort of am in love with him from afar anyway with the totality of the man, from “Big Night” to his acting and directing work and in every way. So does everyone who knows him. He's just real treat to work with. It wasn't a tough job to imagine being in love with him.

Q: What research did you do before stepping into her skin?

MERYL: You know what Nora did, she did what she called a costume test, but it was really sort of introducing us to our world. She took us up to the rooms which they built in the Paris apartment, that she built in Queens, or wherever they were, and let us walk around in our clothes. In isolation in your Winnebago, or whatever it is, you kind of have a hard time convincing yourself that you are who you say you are. When you walk into this world and the light comes in a certain way and the landscape of Paris – a photograph, but still – and here's the man of your dreams, it all came together before we had to actually do it. That was a big day.

Q: Julia Child went through so many challenges in the beginning of her career. What were some of the challenges that you went through as you started out as an actress?

MERYL: Well, my challenge was committing to acting, thinking that it was a serious enough thing to do with my life. What are you going to do with your one wild life? I just didn't think it was…I don't know. I thought it was sort of silly and vain, acting, even though it was the most fun that I had ever done. It remains that, ergo it can't be good for me. It was just deciding. I remember thinking the first time that someone said, 'Well, what do you do?' and I said, 'I'm a…I'm a, uh, actor.' Then I had committed I realized, but it took a long time.

Q: How important was it to you that this film include the McCarthyism at that time and the impact of that on this couple?

MERYL: Well, I think it's really hard for us now to imagine the kind of terror that a lot of people lived under where your entire livelihood could be taken away. I just saw a documentary that's going to be aired next year for American Masters about Joseph Papp. It's about the early days that he actually went to Los Angeles and worked in a school there. He was in the same class with Marilyn Monroe and these other really, really wonderful actors. And he was a socialist. I actually think he was a member of the Communist Party at some time or another, but people lives were ruined within a year. Within one year that black list was a done deal and it was over. It was over. Betsy Rice, Carroll Rice's wife. They had to move to England and never worked in this country again. So, so many people. I don't think that we have any sense of it now, how an association in a so-called free country prevents you from making a movie ever. That happened.

Q: How hard or easy has it been to stay focused with all the success you've had in recent years? Also, can you talk about how challenging it was sustaining Julia's voice?

MERYL: You know what, I didn't think about it. I really didn't think about either sustaining my career or my voice. I haven't really thought about it. I'm like every other 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 downtime even though it seems like you're working, working, working. So I've never gotten used to either being working or being out of work. So it's a very uncertain life and there are only a few people that would sign up to be married to someone else doing that. My husband is an artist and he understands that, the vagaries of the job. I just take it as everyday is a miracle and I'm really glad that I'm still working and that people are not sick of me. Even I'm sick of me a little bit.

Q: How do you deal with all the accolades?

MERYL: Well, fortunately, the blogosphere supplies you with the other side of all the accolades [laughs]. Just sign on and get humble.

Q: You mentioned earlier that you had a hard time committing to acting. What were some of the other things you were taking seriously at that time?

MERYL: Well, when I was in drama school I was obsessed with Jonathan Schell's book 'Fate of the Earth'. I've always been interested in environmental issues and I still am. That seems to me be worthwhile work, but over time I understood, just what I think from other people's work, we need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration, to keep going on the days that you're low. We need each other in that way. So yeah, I've reconciled myself to the fact that you can make a contribution. I've even reconciled myself to the fact that even my children might choose this profession. They seem to be, and now that's okay. Really I was pushing the sciences but it's just not going to happen.

Q: What were your favorite food memories, chefs and restaurants, from New Jersey?

MERYL: Great, great tomatoes, but my mother was the 'I Hate To Cook' cookbook. Peg Bracken. Do you remember that? No. Not in your family. I remember when I was ten going up to a little girl's house up the street and she and her mother were sitting at the table and they were doing something to tennis balls and I said, 'What are you doing?' They said, 'Making mash potatoes.' I said, 'What do you mean? Mash potatoes come in a box.' They were potatoes. They were peeling potatoes and I had never seen a real potato. So my mother's motto was, 'If it's not done in twenty minutes it's not dinner.' She had a lot that she wanted to do and cooking wasn't one of those things. I recently found my knitting book at the bottom of knitting bag from 1967. It wasn't a knitting book. It was a magazine that had some knitting patterns in it and it was called 'Women's Day' from 1967. It's filled with recipes and food ads and it's all Delmonte canned peas, Delmonte canned corn, Delmonte peas and corn, green beans and all the recipes are, like, take ground meat and put artificial mashed potatoes, layer it, top it off with tomato sauce out of a jar, put it in the oven and presto it's dinner. This is how we ate. People forget. Julia changed the way that people thought about cooking. It was great.

“Julie & Julia” opens everywhere August 7th .