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Famed singer and actress Dolly Parton is the subject of a new A&E biography, airing Sunday, April 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. She has been active in the country music for over 50 years, so with that in mind, fans might be wondering how old and tall the legendary artist is. Here’s what you need to know.
Dolly Parton is 74 Years Old
Parton was born on January 19, 1946, in Pittman Center, Tennessee, making her 74 years old in 2020. She grew up poor in a one-room cabin, the fourth of 12 children born to Avie Lee Caroline Owens and Robert Lee Parton Sr. Both of Parton’s parents and two of Parton’s siblings have passed away — her brother Larry died in infancy in 1955, father died in 2000, her mother died in 2003 and her brother Floyd died in 2018.
Parton began performing locally in Tennessee as a young girl and ran off to Nashville to pursue music as soon as she graduated high school. She would go on to co-star on Porter Wagoner’s weekly television program and then have a string of country hits. In the 1970s and 1980s, she even crossed over to the pop charts on over a dozen songs.
Dolly Parton is 5’0″ Tall
The petite singer only stands at five feet tall, but she packs a wallop into that diminutive frame. She also is quite candid about the way she “enhances” her beauty and how much plastic surgery she’s had over the years.
“My look is really based on a country girl’s idea of glam. I wasn’t naturally pretty, so I make the most of anything I’ve got,” she told CBS Sunday Morning in a September 2019 interview, adding, “I’m telling you, I’m not. You should have seen me this morning before I got ready to see you. I’m serious, though. I’m not a natural beauty, but I can enhance it. Whatever it takes, I do. I try to make the most of everything.”
“It is true that I look artificial, but I believe that I’m totally real.”
She also told the New York Times that she sleeps with a full face of makeup on in case there’s a middle-of-the-night emergency.
“You never know if you’re going to wreck the bus, you never know if you’re going to be somewhere in a hotel and there’s going to be a fire. So I leave my makeup on at night and clean my face in the morning.”
And Parton doesn’t really care what other people think of her. In a 1977 interview with Barbara Walters for ABC News, Parton said she knows people make fun of her, but she’s in on the joke.
“Oh, I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years, the people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing and I can change it any time,” said Parton.
The Dolly Parton A&E biography airs Sunday, April 12 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., followed by Willie Nelson: American Outlander, a special concert that pays tribute to Nelson’s seven-decades-long career.
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