Steel Magnolias is remembered for laughter and grief, but its most vivid memory for Julia Roberts was being rescued. The sweltering Louisiana summer of 1988 nearly broke her. Director Herbert Ross berated her in front of the crew, and the older women around her did not let that continue.
In late June 1988, six actresses moved into rented historic homes in Natchitoches, Louisiana, for ten weeks of location shooting. Robert Harling had written the stage story to honor his younger sister, Susan Harling Robinson, a Natchitoches resident who died in 1985 at age thirty after giving birth and suffering complications of Type 1 diabetes. Roberts arrived to play Susan’s onscreen counterpart, Shelby Eatenton Latcherie, while her breakout comedy Mystic Pizza had not yet opened.
She stood beside five established stars. Forty-two-year-old Dolly Parton played hairdresser Truvy Jones. Sally Field played Shelby’s mother M’Lynn. Shirley MacLaine played Ouiser Boudreaux. Olympia Dukakis played Clairee Belcher. Daryl Hannah played newcomer Annelle Dupuy. The group worked through nearly 100-degree humidity until Labor Day.
Ross, a former Broadway choreographer known for a cold and autocratic style, repeatedly singled Roberts out during emotionally taxing hospital and family scenes. He told the young actress she could not act. He also ordered her to remove a small mole beneath her right eye. Roberts left the set many times to cry in hidden corners or inside her trailer.
The director did not spare Parton either. When Ross suggested she needed acting lessons, Parton answered him in front of the team. In her 1994 autobiography, she said she was a personality hired to do the film and that it was his job to make her look like she was acting.
After that, the older actresses closed ranks. Field later recalled at an American Film Institute tribute that Parton, Field, MacLaine, and Dukakis used their industry leverage to confront Ross whenever he bullied the baby of the group. Their protection forced him to back down.
Parton also made the soundstage feel human. Inside the garage beauty parlor set on Front Street and around the historic Eatenton family home, she turned holding areas into a refuge. Even when the air conditioning failed, she wore Truvy’s heavy blond wigs and Rhinestone salon aprons, told bawdy jokes, sang acoustic songs between camera setups, and cooked Southern meals at her rented house.
When a rough take left Roberts in tears, Parton sat beside her, wiped her face, and reminded her to keep her light alive.
Do not let anyone dim your light.
Off the clock, the six women ate together at local Natchitoches places such as Lasyone’s Meat Pie Kitchen and Mariner’s Restaurant on Sibley Lake. The sisterhood they showed onscreen became a real bond.
When Steel Magnolias opened in November 1989, it earned more than 96 million dollars domestically. Roberts won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and received her first Academy Award nomination at age twenty-two. Four months later, Pretty Woman made her the most sought-after leading lady in Hollywood.
Years later, after becoming one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses and an Oscar winner, Roberts still credited Parton and the women of that Louisiana beauty shop with shielding her when she needed it most.
The bond lasted decades. In June 2012, Field, Roberts, Parton, Hannah, and Dukakis reunited on stage in Los Angeles to present MacLaine with the AFI Life Achievement Award and traded stories about surviving Herbert Ross together. Even after Dukakis died in May 2021 and Parton passed away at age eighty on August 25, 2026, the surviving women still spoke of their Natchitoches co-star as the anchor of their group.
In her tribute after Parton’s passing, fifty-eight-year-old Roberts called knowing Dolly a treasure in her life. She remembered the forty-two-year-old singer in a hairdresser’s apron who stepped between a frightened twenty-one-year-old actress and a Hollywood director thirty-eight summers earlier.