Dolly Parton was at the top of her game at the start of the eighties - her single 9 to 5 was at number one and her movie debut in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was a box office hit.
But behind the scenes, the country legend's life was unravelling with the star plunged into a deep depression after suffering a series of brutal medical setbacks.
For years Dolly, now 74, had been suffering from extreme abdominal pain and bleeding and had undergone two surgeries to stop internal heamorraging.
Pumped full of antibiotics, steroids and hormones, the star started self-medicating with alcohol and food, but both left her throat hoarse and the star unable to sing.
Fluctuating between extreme dieting and binge eating, Dolly quickly gained 50lbs to her diminutive 5ft frame.
"I was always just a hog, I still am. I’m short and I have a big appetite. I can’t do nothing just a little," she said in 2017 book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton.
"It’s hard for me to love a little, have sex a little, to eat a little. I like to do everything and I like to do it all the way that I want to do it."
A lifelong lover of junk food and tinned meat, Dolly admitted she could eat three pizzas and craved french fries, popcorn, peanuts and McDonald’s.
And so started a toxic cycle where Dolly would gain 10lbs in 10 days and then starve it off. But it wasn't long before the abuse took its toll on her fragile body.
"On top of being medicated, Dietin' Dolly would go on liquid protein, Scarsdale, Atkins, the water diet, then I'd binge, diet, gain, start all over again," she continued.
"Eventually my system wouldn't work anymore. My body couldn't hold up under that strain."
Doctors told her to lose 20lbs, insisting it would be easy if she just ate the right things. But for Dolly, the issues were about more than food with the star explaining, "overeating is as much a sickness as drugs or alcohol."
The situation finally came to a head when Dolly performed in Indianapolis against doctors orders and passed out on stage from internal bleeding.
She was finally diagnosed with endometriosis - which causes tissue from the womb to grow outside of the uterus - and underwent a partial hysterectomy and had her 'tubes tied', ending her ability to conceive.
Since marrying her husband Carl Dean in 1966, they'd dreamed of having six children and had even picked names out.
But Dolly bravely fought to accept her new reality, using her music to vent her heartbreak. And slowly, she got her health back under control too.
These days the icon - whose measurements are close to 40-20-36 - sticks to a healthy diet Monday to Friday but then all bets are off at the weekend.
The 'crazy diets' are a thing of the past and she's not adverse to the off nip-tuck to achieve the petite look she's famed for.
"If you get those little pouches that no amount of exercise or diet's going to get, well, you just go in for a sucking," she joked.
"If it makes you feel your best self - and as long as you don't get your plastic surgeon from the Yellow pages - what's wrong with it?"
As for her devoted but rarely seen husband Carl, he loves her any shape or size.
"He doesn't care if I'm fat," she added. "He was never turned off. He's fool enough to think I'm the sexiest, prettiest woman in the world."
