From poverty to power: It’s Dolly Parton the movie

PEAS IN A POD: Dolly says that Alyvia, below, looks so much like her younger self the memories broug

COUNTRY singer Dolly Parton has told how her family was so poor that the doctor who delivered her was paid with a bag of grain.

 

She recalled her early life of grinding poverty after selecting a seven-year-old child star to play her in a new TV film.

Alyvia Lind is a dead ringer for the singer when she was a child in the 1940s and 1950s in the remote Appalachian town of Locust Ridge, Tennessee.

Dolly, 69, said Alyvia brought memories flooding back and tears to her eyes.

I knew at once she was the only one for the role

Dolly Parton

 

Dolly, who with her 11 siblings slept on a straw bed in a house without gas, electricity or running water, said: “She reminds me so much of my younger self in looks and temperament.

"I knew at once she was the only one for the role.”

The film Coat Of Many Colours is named after her 1971 hit about a childhood garment her mother made for her from leftover scraps.

It will reveal how Dolly’s mother suffered from mental health problems, often leaving the children to fend for themselves.

Her father was “in equal parts, hard-working and hard-drinking”.