Barbara Eden Recalls Casting Director’s Cruel Advice Before She Became a TV Star

Barbara Eden was once told she didn’t have the right body for Hollywood years before she became the star of I Dream of Jeannie.

In the 1950s, an introduction to a Warner Bros. casting director could have been a big break but was anything but. He looked at her and told her bounty she needed a bigger chest to make it on the big screen.

“I went in, and the man was, ‘Okay,’ kind of abrupt,” Eden, 95, recalled in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Sunday, August 30. “And he said, ‘Look … you’re just not the type. You’re not. You’re not Hollywood type.”

The executive then produced a photograph of his daughter to illustrate the kind of woman he believed Hollywood wanted. Eden says he bluntly pointed to her figure

“He said, ‘This is what they want. This is a picture of my daughter. Big [expletive].'” she said. “Can you believe? I mean, and of course …. nowadays that wouldn’t be a big deal, but I wasn’t raised for a man in my family to even say the word [expletive] … Lord, I was just shocked.”

The casting director also advised Eden to go home and marry her boyfriend because “you won’t make it.”

But about five months later, Eden found herself back at Warner Bros. on her way to an acting class when someone called out to her.

It was the same casting director who had previously dismissed her.

“And he said, ‘Are you in here seeing [the acting coach]?'” she explained. “I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘Have they tested you yet?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Okay, we’re going to test you.’ Can you believe that?”

Eden went on to prove his original assessment spectacularly wrong. She landed numerous film and television roles before becoming a household name as Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie, which ran from 1965 to 1970.