Picture a job where you're serving food to Brad Pitt, Renée Zellweger, and Teri Hatcher. Sound glamorous? Well, for film caterers, a celebrity is just another hungry mouth, one that often has a penchant for gluten-free, low-fat, or sugar-free food.

Marilyn Kopansky and Lisanne Collett, the owners of Edible Planet, have catered everything from TV series like Dark Angel and The X-Files to movies such as Seven Years in Tibet and Romeo Must Die. On average, they serve 120 to 250 people a day in an intense work environment, juggling changes in the weather, filming schedules, and actor demands.

"It is different than regular catering because you have the same clients for an extended period of time. Plus, in other catering, you don't have to get up at 2 a.m. and your catering doesn't hinge on weather. Your day can change on a moment's notice and on the whim of a director," says Collett over the phone.

Because Collett and Kopansky could be cooking for the same film crew for up to 90 days, they need a large repertoire. In their compact truck kitchens, they prepare two to three meals a day, which the film industry refers to as "breakfast", "lunch", and "second lunch". "We just call it [the first meal of the shoot] breakfast. Breakfast could be 4 in the morning, noon, or 6 o'clock at night," Collett explains.

Often a crew will wake up at night to start work, so an evening "breakfast" will consist of standard selections like cereal, yogurt, sausages, eggs, and bacon. After six hours, the caterers offer "lunch", and then at the 12-hour mark, they prepare a "second lunch" that must speedily feed everyone, from the camera operator to the makeup artist. These healthy, locally sourced dishes are served buffet-style and include such items as grilled West Coast salmon with lemon jam, ravioli with tomato sauce, and roasted butternut squash with toasted pumpkin seeds.

Of course, caterers must also be prepared for the inevitable specific requests. Collett insists that they were happy to provide David Duchovny with his morning wheatgrass, and Brendan Fraser with his spinach salad. "Sometimes the actors are so specific about their diets that they are just glad that they can get an organic free-range chicken breast. All of them were very grateful," she says.

She adds that caterers and crew can become like a family to the point where the trucks can transform into communal kitchens. "We had a producer from Italy and his wife come into our truck and make quattro formaggio gnocchi. We also had Wesley Snipes make ribs and collard greens [for the whole cast and crew]," Collett says.

Make no mistake, film catering isn't for just any aspiring cook. Chef Bob Bedard, owner of Cinema Scenes, thrives on the roller-coaster ride of the job and has catered movies such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Things We Lost in the Fire. Bedard is based in Vancouver, but he and his trucks have done catering across the country, from Alberta to Nova Scotia. "I stay with the bigger shows because they present bigger headaches and bigger challenges," he jokes during a phone interview.

Celebrities' dietary requirements are part of these blockbuster challenges. "When I was dealing with Hilary Swank [for The Core], I was dealing with a dietitian on the other side of the world," he says. Fortunately, some celebrities are quite content to eat with the crew. When they were here for Brad Pitt's Jesse James, "Brad and Angelina [Jolie] didn't want any part of the pampering. They got their meals like everybody else and didn't want any fancy garnishes," he recalls.

Besides accommodating celebrity palates, Bedard has also cooked in conditions that have demanded his talents as chef, woodsman, and mechanic. "I've been in freezing temperatures. I've been hit by tornadoes [in Alberta] with my buffet tent being blown away," he says. His mobile kitchens also come with their own hazards, from engines breaking down to doors flying open and scattering contents onto the road.

One of Bedard's most difficult gigs was for The Claim, on Fortress Mountain in Alberta. Crews had to build the on-set kitchen four months ahead of the shoot, before the snow set in. "There was no road access, so we had to create special skis to haul things up and down the mountain," he says.

Despite such logistical nightmares, Bedard prepares everything from scratch, from the breads to the desserts. He also tries to create three different "lunch" items one vegetarian and two meat every day.

Roasted Alberta striploin and grilled wild sockeye salmon are far from easy feats when Bedard is hours away from civilization. But he says he wouldn't trade in these experiences for the fixed location of a restaurant kitchen. "The challenge and the craziness of the job are somehow appealing to me. Anything can happen literally," he says chuckling.