Dolly Parton didn’t just make a huge impact in the world of music – she made waves on the big and small screen too.
The world was left devastated when it was announced yesterday that the hitmaker and multi-award-winning country music icon had died, aged 80, following a brief battle with cancer.
Heartbroken fans and celebrities alike paid tribute to the star, whose creative legacy as well as her tireless work in advocacy and charity, will live on.
As well as releasing several iconic records, Dolly also landed film roles across more than four decades, and even earned a PrimetimeEmmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and six Golden Globe Awards
To celebrate Dolly’s impressive career, here are seven films you can stream in the UK right now…
Joyful Noise (2012)
Where to watch: Available to rent and buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, Rakuten TV, and the Sky Store
Released in 2012, Joyful Noise follows a small-town gospel choir in Pacashau, Georgia, as they try to win a national competition while overcoming internal friction.
Dolly starred as G. G. Sparrow alongside Queen Latifah’s Vi Rose Hill, who clash while trying to lead the choir.
Speaking to Glamour, Parton explained how she related to the film and its musical elements.
‘Well, I certainly grew up singing gospel music, but I wasn’t in the kind of church with a choir. We had congregation singing, more like special quartets and duets and that sort of thing.
‘But I have always loved gospel music and I certainly relate to going to the church, the spiritual element of it, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this movie so much, because I really love the uplifting message of it.
‘I related to the people, the hard times, the economy and people struggling to get by, so certainly many things appealed and the main one was that it makes people feel good, and it is uplifting.’
Dolly Parton’s Christmas in the Square (2020)
Where to watch: Netflix
Yes, we know its still summer and far too early for Christmas films, but Dolly is simply a delight in Christmas in the Square.
The festive flick follows the cold-hearted Regina Fuller (Christine Baranski) who plans to evict her hometown’s residents and sell the land before Christmas, only to be visited by a guardian angel.
Dolly wrote 14 original songs for the film and also starred as an angel spreading love and cheer for the festive season.
During her time making the film, she became good friends with Christine Baranski, telling Buzzfeed: ‘I loved being with Christine. We got to be friends. We’d sit around and talk in between takes.
‘One of my favorite times was playing on my bus with Debbie Allen’s little grandbaby – I just loved that. To me, it just made it fun all the time.
‘And hanging out with Jenifer Lewis was a hoot. She was entertaining everybody. So I have all kinds of wonderful memories of it.’
Straight Talk (1992)
Where to watch: Available to rent and buy on Prime Video and Apple TV
If there is anyone that could use their charm and charisma to propel a radio station to success – it’s Dolly Parton.
Which is exactly what made her perfect for her leading role in Straight Talk, a 1992 romantic comedy film directed by Barnet Kellman.
Dolly appears as Shirlee, who leaves behind her unfulfilling rural life and neglectful boyfriend to start over in Chicago.
While looking for a job at a radio station, a freak mix-up sees Shirlee appear live on air during a call-in advice show.
She becomes a hit, and begins regularly presenting her own show, Doctor Shirlee, dishing out her unique brand of homespun, common sense wisdown.
However, investigative reporter Jack Russell (James Woods) suspects she is a fraud and tries to dig up dirt on Shirlee.
‘It’s not hard for me to do this part because I’m always giving advice,’ she said in a 1992 TV interview.
‘Not unless somebody asks but boy, if they do, I’ll let ’em have it.’
Dumplin’ (2018)
Where to watch: Netflix
While Dolly doesn’t star in Dumplin’, this Netflix film is the perfect celebration of her music and personality.
Based on the 2015 novel by Julie Murphy, the film follows Willowdean ‘Dumplin’ Dickson (Danielle Macdonald), a confident plus-size teenager in Texas.
To protest her former beauty-queen mother Rosie’s (Jennifer Aniston) obsessive pageant culture and to honour her late aunt who raised her, she enters the local Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant, inspiring other unconventional contestants to join and spark a local revolution
So how does Dolly fit into the film? Well, not only did she pen the original soundtrack, her career and personality also inspired the original story – not to mention Willowdean being a fierce fan of the singer.
At the time of the film’s release, Dolly explained how she worked alongside producer Linda Perry on the soundtrack.
‘Jennifer Aniston took Linda and me to see a rough cut of it. I got to know all the characters — the attitudes, the emotions, the feelings of all the people,’ she told Billboard.
‘That’s when we started to write the different songs for it. I wrote the lyrics mostly. Linda’s very strong with music and I’m good with words and feelings, so it was a very good collaboration. It was all based on what I felt the movie was about.’
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
Where to watch: Available to rent and buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, and the Sky Store
This was only Dolly’s second Hollywood role, but it’s one that went down a storm and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Directed by Colin Higgins and based on the stage show of the same name, the film follows Dolly’s Mona Stangley and her lover, Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds), who fight to keep her brothel The Chicken Shack open when it is targeted by a vicious campaign bytelevision reporter Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise).
It propelled Dolly’s career to new heights and she even went as far as to say that there was a trashy joke within the film that would end up on her tombstone – ‘It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.’
She opened up about her ‘trashy’ persona during an appearance on the WorkLife Podcast with Adam Grant in April 2022, saying: ‘Everybody said, “She’s trash.” And in my little girl mind, I thought, “Well, that’s what I’m going to be when I grow up.”
‘It was really the look I was after. I wasn’t a natural beauty. So, I just like to look the way I look. I’m so outgoing inside in my personality, that I need the way I look to match all of that.’
Nine to Five
Where to watch: Prime Video
In 1980, Dolly made her big screen debut in Nine to Five, a role which arguably became her most iconic.
She starred alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as three working women who live out their fantasies of getting even with and overthrowing their company’s ‘sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot’ vice president Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman).
The film was eventually turned into a hit stage show with songs written by Dolly as well as some of her biggest existing hits.
Esteemed film critic Roger Ebert reflected on meeting Dolly at the 1980 premiere of Nine to Five, writing: ‘Dolly Parton spent about half an hour shaking everybody’s hand and leaving behind a wake of people telling each other, “Gee, she’s really nice,” as if, well, as if somehow she shouldn’t have been.
‘There is a way in which we behave in public, in situations with a lot of strangers that implies a level of polite, subtle hostility. We are reserved. We check out the room for traps and hazards. We are uncomfortable, confronted with a hundred unfamiliar faces.
‘What Dolly did was to come in with her brash, unaffected personality and sweep away all that paranoia in a rush of good will. It left everybody standing around afterward feeling a little goofy.’
Of her role in the film, he said: ‘Dolly Parton has a unique comic presence, she seems to be having a lot of fun on the screen, and if she finds the right roles and the right direction, she can be so successful in the movies that her singing career will seem like an afterthought. Whatever it is that stars have and others don’t have, Dolly has.’
Steel Magnolias
Where to watch: Channel 4
No Dolly film marathon would be complete without watching Academy Award-nominated drama Steel Magnolias.
The film, directed by Herbert Ross and written by Robert Harling, follows a close-knit group of women in a small Louisiana town whose lives centre around Truvy’s local beauty salon
Dolly starred as Truvy Jones, the warm-hearted owner of the local beauty shop.
Earlier this year Julia Roberts told Oprah Winfrey on her talk show the words of advice Dolly gave her while they filmed Steel Magnolias in sweltering temperatures.
‘Everybody had ice on their wrists doing the whole thing. Everybody was like, it’s hot, could I get some water? And Dolly never said anything,’ she recalled.
‘And I finally, I just had to say, “Dolly, you’ve got a wig, and the wool, I mean, c’mon. It’s hot, sweat a little. Just say, I’m hot, you know? This is a drag.”
‘I remember we were sitting on the porch, 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 of these things, I’m not going to complain about it.”‘
She continued: ‘And I thought, “Okay, I’m going to be quiet for the rest of the day.” I’ve never forgotten it. And every time I go to complain, or just kind of moan, I always hear Dolly sitting on the porch and saying that, and it kinda keeps you quiet.’