Jennifer Aniston has said the best advice she ever received came from the late Queen of Country, Dolly Parton.
The Friends star was speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Wednesday when she revealed the advice her late collaborator gave her.
“She would say, ‘I chased a few rainbows and I caught a few.’ So I would say just go chase your dreams and go catch some rainbows. Chase rainbows,” Aniston said of her “dear friend” Parton.
The event was in celebration of her boyfriend Jim Curtis’ new self-help book, The Book of Possibility.
Aniston and Parton worked together on the 2018 Netflix movie Dumplin’, which starred Danielle Macdonald as an underdog teen who enters a beauty pageant, starring Aniston as the protagonist’s mom. Parton contributed to the soundtrack, providing the Grammy-nominated song “Girl in the Movies” which she co-wrote with Linda Perry.
As executive producer and star of the series, it was Aniston who asked Parton to be involved.
“I didn’t think any more about [the book] until Jennifer Aniston’s company called me a couple years ago sayin’ that she was doing it as a movie and was gonna be starrin’ in it and asking if they could license some of my original music for the movie and I said, ‘Of course,’” Parton previously recalled.
Through her Echo Films banner, Aniston has been working on a reimagination of the 1980 comedy film 9 to 5, in which Parton made her film debut. While Parton wasn’t involved in the forthcoming project, she gave it her blessing before her death.
“I love Jennifer,” Parton said in 2025. “I think it’ll be a wonderful thing… I do wish her the best, because the script I read, I thought, was really good and a new and different take that really brings the office up to date the way that people live now.”
Parton, who died last week aged 80 following a “brief battle with cancer,” has been remembered, in part, for the wise life advice that she would give to her co-stars and fans.
In the wake of Parton’s death, a clip resurfaced of Julia Roberts recalling the advice she got from Parton while working together on the 1989 movie Steel Magnolias.
During an appearance that year on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote the movie, Roberts shared that Parton had given her a crucial piece of advice during a sweltering day filming in the Louisiana summer heat.
“Everyone had ice on their wrist and was doing the whole thing, everyone was like, ‘It’s hot, can I get some water?’ And I finally just had to say, ‘Dolly, I mean, you’ve got a wig and the wool. Come on, it’s hot, sweat a little, you know? Just say ‘I’m hot,’ you know. ‘This is a drag!’” Roberts recalled to host Winfrey.
She continued: “And she said — I remember we were sitting on the porch, do you remember this? And she said to me, ‘When I was a little girl, I wanted to be famous and I wanted to be rich, and now I’m both those things. I’m not going to complain about it.’”
Roberts said that she took the advice very seriously and that she’s “never forgotten it.”
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be quiet for the rest of the day,’” she said at the time.
She added: “And every time I go to complain or just kind of moan, I always hear Dolly sitting on the porch and saying that, and it kind of keeps you quiet.”
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