13 things you probably didn't know about Julia Child

Born Julia McWilliams, Child was the oldest of three children. Her parents, John McWilliams Jr. and Julia Carolyn Weston, provided a privileged upbringing for their children.

According to Biography, McWilliams was a Princeton alumna and an early investor in California real estate, while Julia's mother was the heiress to a paper company and the daughter of a Massachusetts politician.

When she attended the elite Katherine Branson School for Girls in San Francisco, she was already 6 feet 2 inches tall — the tallest girl in her class, according to Biography.

In 1942, Child attempted to join the military, but they turned her away for being too tall — the Women's Army Corps required recruits to be no taller than 6 feet tall.

According to Biography, when Child enrolled at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, she had aspirations of becoming a famous author.

She even submitted multiple manuscripts to The New Yorker and wrote short plays in her spare time. However, none of her early work was published.

After graduating, moving to New York, and being fired from her job in the advertising department of home furnishings company W. & J. Sloane, Child moved to Washington, DC.

Once she arrived, she began volunteering as a research assistant for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a newly-formed government intelligence agency that would eventually become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to History, in her interview notes, the following was written about her: "Good impression, pleasant, alert, capable, very tall."

During her time at the OSS, Child developed a shark repellant and facilitated the communication of important, top-secret documents between US government officials and their intelligence officers.

Julia Child's story goes to show that it's never too late to discover your passion in life. Julia married her husband, Paul Child, after meeting through the OSS at the age of 34, which was considered unusually late in life in the 1940s.

According to Biography, after Paul was given a job at the American Embassy in Paris, the two moved to France and Julia Child's love for French cuisine grew.

"The whole experience was an opening up of the soul and spirit for me ... I was hooked, and for life, as it turned out," she said.

After moving to Paris, Child began taking cooking lessons at one of the most prestigious culinary schools in the world, Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

She trained for six months in the art of French cooking, during which time she took private lessons from chef Max Bugnard. According to Biography, after she graduated, she started her own cooking school along with two other Le Cordon Bleu students, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, called L'Ecole de Trois Gourmandes or "The School of the Three Gourmands."

Child worked alongside Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle to begin writing the cookbook that would change her life forever and bring French cuisine into American households nationwide — "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

The book was eventually published in 1961 after multiple rewrites, years of testing and retesting recipes, and setbacks. The book quickly became a bestseller.

To promote her new book, Child appeared on a live TV program and demonstrated how to cook an omelet. Viewers quickly fell in love with the cheery, personable chef with the unique voice, and Julia Child was soon offered her very own show, "The French Chef," on a Boston educational television station.

The program ran for 10 years, after which Child continued to star in multiple other TV shows and publish more cookbooks.

One of the very first episodes of "The French Chef" featured Child cooking beef bourguignon. The dish, which takes more than six hours to prepare, would eventually become practically synonymous with Child.

Julia Child perhaps loved the creamy dairy product so much that when she had a rose named after her, she chose a bright, butter-colored one, according to PBS.

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook," Child famously said.

Julia Child starred in eight television cooking series and published 11 cookbooks. For forty years, she was considered America's leading chef and one of the first-ever celebrity chefs.

The prestigious honor came just two years after Child was awarded France's highest honor, the Legion of Honor. Then, in August 2002, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History unveiled an exhibit featuring the same kitchen in which Child filmed three of her most popular cooking shows.

Just two days before her 92nd birthday in 2004, Julia Child died of kidney failure at her assisted-living home in Montecito, California.

Julia Child kept a relatively active lifestyle up until a month before her death, frequenting farmers' markets and eating at restaurants multiple times per week, according to the LA Times.

"In this line of work ... you keep right on till you're through ... Retired people are boring," she once said.

However, when Child began experiencing health issues, she was forced to slow down. According to the LA Times, the French chef's last meal was a bowl of homemade French onion soup prepared by her longtime assistant, Stephanie Hersh.

"She was the grand dame of cooking," cookbook author Marion Cunningham told The Times. "She brought more people to the kitchen that had never thought of going into the kitchen. She has never been matched on television. She was humorous. She could just arrest your attention. Whatever that magic is, she had it, and it is so rare."

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