Shirley MacLaine Remembers ‘Steel Magnolias’ as It Turns 30: ‘We’re All Still Friends’

The 1989 classic — also starring Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah, and a young Julia Roberts — is now playing in select theaters
The legendary Southern sisterhood is still strong with the women of Steel Magnolias.
30 years after its debut in theaters, Shirley MacLaine tells PEOPLE her fellow all-star cast of women — Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Julia Roberts, Sally Field, and Daryl Hannah — still keep in touch to this day.
“We check in with each other,” she says. “Not all the time, but we know what we’re doing.”
Steel Magnolias, based on the 1987 play of the same name, explored the relationships and sisterhood of a group of women in a small Southern community. MacLaine, 85, played Louisa “Ouiser” Boudreaux, the grouchy one of the group with a hardened heart of gold.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the film is returning to select theaters on May 19, 21, and 22, courtesy of TCM’s Big Screen Classics series.
In a cast full of Hollywood A-listers, MacLaine recalls being most “impressed” with country superstar Parton.

Steel Magnolias. at the time, scored the film’s sole Oscar nomination. The young actress was filming her breakout romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988) when she nabbed the heartbreaking role of Shelby Eatenton Latcherie in Steel Magnolias. Her devastating performance landed her a Best Supporting Actress nomination. (She would later go on to win Best Actress for Erin Brockovich in 2001.)
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“We were rehearsing on a sound stage, I can’t remember where, and she walks in,” MacLaine remembers. “And the way she walked into the room and sat down and said hello… I got up from the table and called my agent before we even started to rehearse. I said, ‘There’s a woman here and she’s going to be a huge star. You should handle her,’ I told him. She was amazing. The energy that she had just walked into the sound stage.”
Tickets to view the return of Steel Magnolias in theaters can be found on Fathom Events.