Dolly Parton has always been "strong enough" to walk away from harassment

She told America's ELLE magazine's Women in Hollywood issue: "I've certainly been harassed in my life. I've certainly had to put up with a lot of BS.

"I was always strong enough to walk away from it and not to have to fall under it. I was lucky that I was in a good country town, where the men in the business have wives, and sisters, and cousins, and children.

"It's not like out there in the big world, like in California, where they chew you up and spit you out, or in New York, where they don't have time, or in other big cities.

The 'Jolene' hitmaker - who is married to Carl Dean - doesn't think the MeToo movement has made as big a difference as people hoped it would but she still believes women are now in a "better place" than ever before.

She said of the campaign: "I think that brought so much stuff to the forefront that people had not been willing to look at, even though they knew it was happening.

"At that time, we really hoped that it would make a bigger difference than it actually did. Although I do feel like it did open a lot of doors and a lot of eyes to a lot of problems that we'd been having since time began.

"We still have a lot of the same problems. I think that we just have to keep working at it. I think the new #MeToo movement and all that stuff has thrown more light onto it.

"I think women are in a better place now than they've ever been before. I've been fortunate in my life that my being a girl kind of helped me along the way, and being from a strong family of men, and women, and not being afraid to stand on my own or to say, 'Go to hell,' if that's where you needed to go."