It’s my Life

It’s easy to imagine that country-music legend Dolly Parton looks much different lying around the house. No elaborate gowns and glitter, no flamboyant wigs and false nails... heck, she might be tall and flat-chested, for that matter, when the spotlight is away from her.

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Not so, Parton says.

“Darlin’, if you come to my door at 8 in the morning, what you see right now is what you get, 365 days a year,” she says. “You will see the wig, the glitter and the nine-inch nails at that hour.”

What if we ring her bell even earlier than that?

“Then I’m not answering the door,” Parton says, and gives her trademark whooping laugh.

Today, as it happens, Parton is a long way from her Tennessee stomping grounds. The 65-year-old singer is at a posh hotel on Park Avenue in New York to talk about her new film . She’s exactly what you’d expect from the legendary Dolly Parton: a tiny slip of a woman in black pants, a sequined white shirt and a sky-high blond wig. Her waist is so tiny that you could wrap two hands around it, and she’s decked out in stiletto heels, ruby-red lipstick and long, square-shaped nails sporting a French manicure.

Life is strange for Parton, who has one of country music’s most passionate fan bases — and one of its more eccentric ones.

“I have a farm in Nashville,” she says, “and one day in the ‘70s we came home and there was a box near our gate with a baby in it. I had just recorded the song (1973), and the note said, ‘Her name is Jolene. I named her after you, so please keep her.’”

Parton laughs.

“I called child services,” she says. “Immediately! Can you even believe it?”

Releasing in the US on January 13, is Parton’s first major movie since (1992). It casts her as GG Sparrow, a singer in a small-town church choir. Sparrow is a progressive thinker, and would like to see the choir do rock and rap tunes that are uplifting, while the choir’s old-fashioned director (Queen Latifah) sees no need for anything beyond classic spirituals. A national choral contest offers the choir new opportunities, but also brings the clash of philosophies out into the open.

“I wanted to set out to inspire people with this movie,” Parton says. “But what was really inspiring to me was working with Queen Latifah. I’ll never forget the first day in the recording studio. It was the first time we laid eyes on each other in person, and we just went to the mike and started jamming and singing.

“I thought, ‘I just love her.’”

“We talked on the phone first about how we felt about this idea for the movie and the script,” Latifah recalls in a separate interview. “I was excited and she was excited to work together. It was a given that we were going to make this movie ... I loved her ‘tell it like it is’ demeanour.”

“Where I’m from, we always tell it like it is,” Parton says when the comment is relayed to her. “Let’s be honest here. You can get some Hollywood individuals in a room and you just don’t have that thing that clicks. We really liked each other… we just clicked from the beginning.”

That’s more than can be said for their characters. Their duel for the soul of the choir escalates to a catfight that isn’t for the faint of heart. Nails fly, hair is pulled and unkind things are said about Parton’s plastic surgeries.

That fight was such good fun,” Parton says, “and that showed on camera… It was so much fun.”

As for the jabs at her look, Parton laughs them off. She’s heard them all before.

“The true story is, I’ve always patterned my look after the town tramp,” the singer says. “When I was growing up, there was this woman who walked the streets in my town. I thought she was the prettiest thing in the world… I’d say to people, ‘Ain’t she pretty?’ I’d hear back, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash.’

“At that moment I knew I wanted to have pretty things,” she says, “but we couldn’t afford it when I was growing up. But I wanted to look good, so I’d pick berries and make lipsticks. I’d use matches and draw brows and beauty marks.

“My grandfather was a preacher and he teamed up with my daddy,” she continues. “Neither of them wanted me to ever wear any makeup, but they couldn’t wipe it off me or burn it out of me.

“I was a rebel,” Parton concludes. “I got whipped a lot for just being myself.”

Dolly Rebecca Parton was one of 12 children of tobacco farmer Robert Lee Parton and his wife, Avie Lee. She grew up in a one-room cabin on a farm in Locust Ridge, Tenn. Her ticket out, however, was always going to be her singing voice. At 12 she was singing on Knoxville television, and at 13 she was already recording on a small label and appearing on .

In 1964, Parton graduated from high school and moved to Nashville to begin her career as a country singer. At the same time she fell in love with Carl Dean, the owner of an asphalt-paving business. They were married in 1966, and remain together to this day.

In 1967, she caught the eye of veteran country star Porter Wagoner, who hired her to appear on his television show. He mentored her, both as a singer and as a songwriter, through the seven years they spent touring and appearing on the show together. They also recorded a series of duets which topped the country charts and made them one of Nashville’s most popular duos.

In 1973 and 1974, the duo split up as Parton launched a solo career. In response to some hard feelings on Wagoner’s part, she wrote the song (1974), a testimony of her enduring affection for him that hit No. 1 on the country charts.

Her solo career produced a long string of hits, and her combination of sex appeal and cheerful country humour brought her to the attention of Hollywood. She had her own television series, (1976), and made her movie debut in (1980), for which her title tune earned her an Oscar nomination. She was nominated again for , written for (2005).

Her subsequent films include (1984) and (1989). Most recently she provided the voice for Dolly Gone in (2011).

In 1986, her Dolly Parton Enterprises opened her theme park, Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. It was intended as a tribute to her childhood in the Smoky Mountains and an effort to bring jobs into the community, and has become one of the region’s most popular attractions.

She could easily retire from country music to run her business interests, but Parton says she never will. “I love everything that I do,” she says. “My music is the reason why I’m enjoying my Dollywood and all the other stuff. Honestly, the music is still the most important thing to me. It’s a song that brought me out of the Smoky Mountains.

“God has been so good to me,” Parton says. “So many of my friends who are my age aren’t doing much anymore. I feel like I’m just starting again. I’m dreaming new dreams.”

In a career that has now spanned more than 50 years, she’s seen some ups and downs, and has learned to ride the wave. “My basic motto in life is, if you want rainbows, then you’ve got to put up with the rain,” Parton says.

· New York Times Syndicate