‘I Dream of Jeannie’ Star Barbara Eden Was Told She Lacked A Key Curvy Quality to Make It in Hollywood
You gotta hand it to I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden — when people told her she didn’t have what it took, she just kept going.
Her first stab at the entertainment business was training as a vocalist at the prestigious San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she told Jennie Garth on this week’s episode of the I Choose Me podcast. But a singing career wasn’t in the cards, at least according to Eden’s mother. “One day I was singing at home,” she said. “And my mom came in and said, ‘Barbara, you’re singing every note perfectly, but you don’t mean a word you're singing. I think you should study acting.’”
Mama knows best, so Eden started taking acting lessons. That seemed to go better — she impressed her theater teacher, who told Eden to skip college so she could focus on her thespian studies. After two years, however, Eden was told to take a hike — in a good way. “Either go to New York or L.A.,” said the teacher. “There's nothing more for you here.”
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Eden had relatives in Los Angeles and made the big move. It didn’t take long before she booked a meeting with a casting director at Warner Bros. “He talked to me,” said Eden. “He knew my background. I told him everything — you know, where I studied, what I did, how many plays I’d done. And I was a member of Actors’ Equity.”
Impressive credentials for a young actress, but the casting director didn’t think Eden had what it took. “He looked at me and he said, ‘You’re just not Hollywood.’”
Not Hollywood? What was Eden missing? “He said, this is what they want.” The casting director pulled out a picture of his daughter and showed it to Eden. “Big tits.”
Beyond the insult — and the fact that the casting director used his daughter as a visual aid — Eden was confused. “I never heard that word in my life,” she told Garth. “I mean, my father, my uncles never said that word.”
But the rest of the casting director’s message was clear. “You’re just not pretty enough,” he said. “You’re just not what they want.”
Eden returned to her aunt and uncle’s home, “and then I cried,” she said. “And then I thought, not everyone looks alike. You need different characters for every play. What is going on here? I don’t care. I’ll be a character actress. I don’t care if I’m not pretty enough.”
She focused on theater roles and, ironically, began working with an acting coach on the Warner Bros. lot, where a casting director eventually invited her to screen test.
“The same man,” she said, “that told me I wasn’t pretty enough.”
