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This is who Dolly Parton would want to play her in a movie

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Dolly Parton reveals which actresses she would want to play her in a movie
Robin Marchant/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
ByHayley FitzPatrick
October 10, 2019, 5:09 PM

County music icon Dolly Parton is one of the most famous performers in the industry.

Having achieved icon status, she knows a movie centered around her life is likely in the cards at some point.

In a new profile with Elle, Parton offered two names for who could possibly play her when the idea of a biopic was mentioned: Reese Witherspoon and Scarlett Johansson.

But she said the casting largely "depends on when I get it done."

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(MORE: Working '9 to 5' again: Dolly Parton expects to shoot the sequel in 'the next few months')

During the interview, Parton also spoke about being unabashedly herself.

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She told the outlet that a friend of hers, the late artist Chet Atkins, once told her she should "tone it down."

"You're wearing too much makeup. You need to have a little more taste," she told the outlet he said to her. "People are never going to take you serious as a songwriter and singer."

However, she decided to march to the beat of her own drum.

"I said, 'You know what? I can't separate the two. This is who I am,'" she told Elle. "I not only didn't tone it down, I figured if my work was truly good enough, people would eventually recognize that."

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She said what remained most important to her was "knowing who I was, being happy with me, and feeling comfortable in the way I presented myself."

"If I was happy, I could make other people happy," she shared. "That's how I've always looked at it: that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, as a writer, as a professional, as a human being. A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond."

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