Barbara Eden biography

Synopsis

Profile

Actress. Born Barbara Jean Huffman, on August 23, 1934, in Tucson, Arizona. Eden was a cheerleader in high school and a pop singer as a teenager. She graduated in 1949 from Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, California.

Eden is most indelibly associated with her role as the genie in the bottle in the long-running TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, co-starring Larry Hagman. In I Dream of Jeannie, Major Anthony Nelson (Hagman) is a NASA astronaut who finds a decorative pink bottle on a desert island after he splashes down in the ocean. The bottle has a beautiful blond genie in it (Eden), who immediately assumes that Nelson is her master. He brings her home to live in Cocoa Beach, Florida. In each episode, the forbidden use ofJeannie's well-meaning mystical powers alters reality in some wacky waythat must be carefully explained away by Nelson. No other person knows ofJeannie's existence except for Nelson's bumbling friend, Major RogerHealey. Together they conspire to keep her secret from everyone else,especially from Nelson's commanding officers at NASA.The sitcom gained a cult following, and Eden still appears from time totime in commercials and cameos that poke gentle fun at her former role.

Before focusing on a TV career, Eden had parts in a series of unremarkablefilms in the 1950s and 1960s. Her first film role was in Back fromEternity (1956). In 1957, she starred on TV in How to Marry aMillionaire (1957) and after I Dream of Jeannie's successfulfive-year run from 1965 to 1970, she starred in Harper Valley PTA(1981-82).She published her autobiography, Barbara Eden: My Story, in October1986.

In 1997, Columbia announced plans to produce a big-screen episode of IDream of Jeannie. Eden was slated to make a cameo appearance as the newJeannie's aunt. The film, originally scheduled for 1998, has not yet beenproduced.

Eden married first husband Michael Ansara in 1958 and divorced him in 1972.The couple had a son, Matthew Michael Ansara, born August 29, 1965. Shemarried Charles Donald Fegert on September 3, 1977, and divorced him in1983. She married Jon Eicholtz in January 1991.

© 2012 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.