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For the past seven decades, Barbara Eden has been a fixture in Hollywood and beyond.
Amid all the roles on stage and screen, none compares to the once-in-a-career part that came with I Dream of Jeannie, the NBC fantasy sitcom that ran for five seasons between 1965 and 1970.
Eden played the titular 2,000-year-old genie named Jeannie opposite Larry Hagman’s astronaut Tony Nelson, with the show catapulting the two costars into television history, thanks to their onscreen chemistry.
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Even now, 60 years after the show debuted, Eden — who recently celebrated her 94th birthday — still makes appearances at comic-cons and fan events around the world.
“I think I had nothing to do with it. It was the audience,” Eden tells PEOPLE of the show’s lasting success. “I didn’t realize, actually, how popular Jeannie was until several years after, and it still amazes me.”
“I can’t believe it. I have mail from Russia. Can you imagine?” the beloved actress adds. “I have fan mail from Russia and China and Japan, Poland, Italy, a lot from Germany and South America, the U.K. — and if you had told me that when we were shooting, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
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Eden says fans often ask her to do Jeannie’s signature move to cast a spell for them, and some even do it back to her, too. The gesture, cemented in pop culture history, goes beyond language.
“It’s magic. They always want magic,” she reasons. “Magic is good.”
These days, Eden is happy spending time at home with her husband, Jon Eicholtz, whom she married in 1991, and their dog Bentley.
“We’re just happy to be together,” she says of their quiet life. “We really enjoy each other.”
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Looking back on her storied career, Eden reflects on how she most wants to be remembered by fans, saying, “That I made them laugh, made them happy, took them to another place.”
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“I have so many people that come up to me and tell me that they had an awful childhood and that the only thing that helped them out was to go in their room and pretend it was a bottle,” she continues, referencing her iconic character’s tiny home.
Eden says hearing this from fans gives her a melancholic feeling, admitting, “It makes me sad and happy at the same time.”
