Breaking News: Dolly Parton Didn’t Think Anyone Would Like Her if She Showed Her True Self…see more

She dresses and styles herself in an exaggerated manner and relies on a cycle of jokes and anecdotes to get through interviews.

In the early days of her career, friends said Parton was too afraid to show the public her true self.

She feared people wouldn’t like what they saw. “I look one way and am another. It makes for a good combination,” she said, per the book Dolly on Dolly, adding, “I always think of ‘her,’ the Dolly image, like a ventriloquist does his dummy.

I have fun with it. I think, what will I do with her this year to surprise people? What’ll she wear? What’ll she say?” “I think the most important thing in Dolly’s life is that people like her,” a friend told Alanna Nash in the book Dolly.

“Because it’s real obvious that she does not think they do. She once told me, ‘If I showed myself just like I was, nobody would like me. No one would think that I was a star.’”