Age is nothing but a number for Barbara Eden.
“I feel young!” the “I Dream of Jeannie” star, who’s 90, recently told Page Six
Eden says that she regularly went to the gym, took spin classes and lifted weights until about three years ago. Nowadays, she has a trainer who comes to the house, where they do resistance training and walk around her tennis court.
“I have a lot of friends,” the TV legend said. “I’m pretty active socially.”
In fact, she even has an appearance lined up for March 2022.
“If I’m around, I’ll be there, I really like it,” she said with a laugh.
“I was very very lucky to like the job I chose,” Eden continued. “I feel sorry for people like my poor father who had to work every day at something he didn’t like. I enjoy my work. I still work.”
One of Eden’s gigs has been co-writing a children’s book called “Barbara And The Djinn” about a spunky little girl named Barbara who meets a “charming and wizardly Genie” who takes her on adventures.
Eden explains that she’s always loved reading and wants children to know “what a wonderful world it is out there in books because now all they do is look at telephones!”
Of course, the plot of the book sounds suspiciously close to the role that made Eden a TV icon — as the titular character in “I Dream of Jeannie.”
In the show, which debuted in 1965, she played a scantily-clad (for those days) genie who is found in her bottle by a U.S. astronaut — played by Larry Hagman — and winds up living with him and getting into endless hijinks.
Eden scoffs at the idea that the sitcom might come across as dated with its use of the word “master” and her character’s subservience.
“Come now, this is a classic theme,” she exclaimed. “‘One Thousand and One Nights’? This is a lovely wonderful fantasy.
“It’s not that she called him master. What’s in a word? She could have said, ‘Hey, guy’ and it would have been the same thing. Master for us nowadays means a whole different thing than it meant to her. And let’s be honest here, she was in the driver’s seat you know. She wasn’t subservient at all.”