Barbara Eden has been acting for an astonishing seven decades and at 92 years old is showing no signs of slowing down.
Best known for her role in “I Dream of Jeannie” which premiered in 1965, the actress, singer, and producer had been on our screens for 10 years before she landed her most famous role. Generations of TV viewers have watched I Dream of Jeannie, the classic 1960s sitcom about an astronaut who brings home a 2,000-year-old female genie.
While the premise might sound silly, viewers tuned in and laughed, thanks to the talented and beautiful actress at the center of it all: Barbara Eden, who played Jeannie.
Fans might find it hard to believe, but Barbara is now 92 years old!
And while it’s been a long time since she’s worn her famous harem outfit on TV, she’s still going strong and keeping busy.
But life hasn’t always been easy for Barbara…
Barbara Eden was born in Tucson, Arizona, United States, in 1931. After her parents’ divorce, she moved to San Francisco, and there she began her career studying voice at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Music. Barbara sang in local bands at local nightclubs in Golden Gate City as a teenager. But after a while, she also decided to study acting.
“My mother said, ‘Barbara, you don’t sound like you mean a word you’re singing. I think you should study acting, too,’” Eden recalled to Closer Weekly.
Acting proved to be a good fit, and soon she moved to LA and began appearing on some of the biggest shows of the ’50s.
She first came to our screens as a semiregular on The Johnny Carson Show in 1955, but it was her role in the famous fantasy sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie” that made her a household name.The Arizona native played Jeannie, a sultry genie set free from her bottle by astronaut and United States Air Force Captain Anthony “Tony” Nelson, played by Larry Hagman.“We just … we clicked. We had the same rhythm. We’ve got the same truth out of whatever we were doing,” Eden told Closer Weekly.
“I loved him a lot. Some actors you have to work at really liking them … and you put it in another box in your brain. But with Larry, I never had to do that. He was there constantly.”
She played the role for five years, even playing additional characters in the show as Jeannie’s evil sister and her hapless mother. Another thing that made Jeannie a sensation was Eden’s harem outfit, which was considered a bit scandalous for TV at the time. “Executives at NBC got very frightened,” she told Today in 2015, near the show’s 50th anniversary. “They became very strict about the navel.”
Leave a Reply