How Dolly Parton Said She Confronted a Director Who 'Didn’t Particularly Like Me' While Filming 'Steel Magnolias'

Dolly Parton once recalled confronting director Herbert Ross while filming the 1989 movie Steel Magnolias.

The country legend noted that she could tell that Ross “didn’t particularly like me.”

“He told me I couldn’t act,” she further wrote in her 1994 memoir Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, per People.

“This was not news to me, and I told him so,” she added.

Parton, who passed away last week at the age of 80 after battling cancer, noted in her autobiography that she responded to the director who was being difficult, “I’m not an actress, I’m Dolly Parton.”

“I’m a personality who has been hired to do this movie. You’re the director. It’s your job to make me look like I’m acting,” she added.

However, she acknowledged, “By the end of the film, we had all made peace and become friends.”

Steel Magnolias centers around a group of women who support each other through life’s ups and downs.

Parton played the character of salon owner Truvy Jones in the film. The star-studded cast also included Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts.

Ross was reportedly especially harsh toward a young Roberts at the time, which prompted everybody on the cast, including the singer, to rally around her in support.

Field recalled as much during a 2024 interview with Vulture, noting that the situation “was awful.”

She highlighted a specific incident when the music icon confronted the director over his behavior toward Roberts, “with humour, but usually the most vulgar humour you ever heard, so that it was like, you just literally don’t have a leg to stand on.”

Roberts, too, spoke of her experience of working with the legend during an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In a resurfaced clip from that interview, she could be seen recalling filming on a particularly hot summer day in Louisiana.

“Everyone had ice on their wrist and was doing the whole thing; everyone was like, ‘It’s hot, can I get some water?’” she said.

“And I finally just had to say, ‘Dolly, I mean, you’ve got a wig and the wool. Come on, it’s hot, sweat a little, you know? Just say ‘I’m hot,’ you know. ‘This is a drag!’” she added.

“And she said – I remember we were sitting on the porch, do you remember this? And she said to me, ‘When I was a little girl, I wanted to be famous and I wanted to be rich, and now I’m both those things. I’m not going to complain about it,’” she continued.

The Pretty Woman star revealed that Parton’s words at the time shifted her perspective on life and she's “never forgotten it.”