“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” Truvy Jones says near the end of Steel Magnolias, and if you saw it in a theater in November 1989, you probably did both inside the same five minutes. The film put six of Hollywood’s best actresses in one small-town Louisiana beauty shop and let them trade insults, recipes and heartbreak over hair dryers. It earned $96.8 million worldwide on a $15 million budget, and three decades later people still quote Ouiser and Clairee at the kitchen table.
The story was painfully real. Robert Harling wrote the play after his sister, Susan Harling Robinson, died in 1985 from complications of type 1 diabetes, and he based Shelby on her. The play opened off-Broadway in 1987, and Harling adapted it himself for director Herbert Ross. Filming took place in Natchitoches, Louisiana, in the summer of 1988 (Harling even turns up as the preacher). So who from that front porch is still with us? We start with the cast members we’ve lost and save the living for last.
Is Bill McCutcheon still alive?
Bill McCutcheon played Owen Jenkins, the old flame who finally coaxes Ouiser Boudreaux out of her bad mood, and he managed to stand toe to toe with Shirley MacLaine in every scene they shared. Younger viewers knew him better as Uncle Wally on Sesame Street, a role he played from 1984 to 1992 and one that won him an Emmy. He also took home a Tony Award in 1988 as Moonface Martin in the Broadway revival of Anything Goes.
McCutcheon died on January 9, 2002, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, at the age of 77. Fifteen years later, the film lost the man who played Truvy’s long-suffering husband.
Is Sam Shepard still alive?
As Spud Jones, Sam Shepard spent most of his screen time half hidden under a truck while Truvy complained that he never talked to her. The casting was a quiet joke, because Shepard was one of the most celebrated writers of his era. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Buried Child and earned an Oscar nomination for playing test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. He and Jessica Lange were together for 27 years after meeting on the set of Frances.
Shepard died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, Kentucky, from complications of ALS, as his family announced and The New York Times reported. He was 73. Later that same year, the film lost the actress who played Aunt Fern.
Is Ann Wedgeworth still alive?
View this post on Instagram
Ann Wedgeworth had a small part as Fern Thornton, but she was a Tony winner, having taken the 1978 award for Neil Simon’s Chapter Two. Sitcom fans remember her as Lana Shields, the man-hungry neighbor on Three’s Company in 1979. Right after Steel Magnolias she landed her longest TV job, as Merleen Elldridge on Evening Shade for four seasons.
Wedgeworth died on November 16, 2017, in North Bergen, New Jersey, after a long illness. She was 83. Four years later came the loss that hit the cast hardest, because it took the woman who delivered the film’s most quoted line.
Is Olympia Dukakis still alive?
“If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me.” With that one line, Olympia Dukakis made Clairee Belcher, the widow of the town’s former mayor, the person everyone wanted at their table. She came to the film fresh off her Academy Award for Moonstruck, and later found a new generation of fans as landlady Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City, a role she played on television from 1993 all the way to the 2019 Netflix revival. Her cousin, Michael Dukakis, was the 1988 Democratic nominee for president.
Dukakis died on May 1, 2021, at her home in Manhattan after a period of failing health. She was 89. Of the six women in Truvy’s shop, five were still with us after that, until this summer, when the shop lost its owner.
Is Dolly Parton still alive?
Truvy Jones ran the busiest beauty parlor in Chinquapin Parish, and Dolly Parton played her with such ease that you would never guess the director doubted her. Ross was hard on her. “He told me I couldn’t act. This was not news to me, and I told him so,” she wrote in her 1994 memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. Her reply to him became a favorite story: “I’m not an actress, I’m Dolly Parton. I’m a personality who has been hired to do this movie. You’re the director. It’s your job to make me look like I’m acting.” By the end of the shoot, she added, “we had all made peace and become friends.”
Parton died on August 25, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 80. Her nephew Bryan Seaver shared the news on her social media accounts on behalf of the family, closing with “She will always love you,” and no cause of death has been made public. You can read our full report on Dolly Parton’s death and the final words she shared with fans. That leaves seven of the film’s principal players still with us, starting with Annelle’s sweetheart.
Is Tom Skerritt still alive?
As Drum Eatenton, Tom Skerritt was the father of the bride who fires a shotgun into the trees to clear the birds before Shelby’s wedding, which tells you most of what you need to know about Drum. He was already a familiar face from M*A*S*H, Alien and Top Gun, and a few years after Steel Magnolias he won an Emmy as Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences.
Yes, Skerritt is alive. He was born August 25, 1933, in Detroit, which means he turned 93 on the very day Dolly Parton died. He has kept working into his nineties, appearing opposite Wyatt Russell and Dennis Quaid in the 2025 rodeo drama Broke, and this year the Department of Veterans Affairs featured the former Air Force man in its campaign honoring 250 veterans for the nation’s 250th birthday. The woman who played the town grouch is right behind him in age.
Sadly, Skerritt died of natural causes on October 21, 2026, at age 93. As reported by People, his family remembered him for his humor, wisdom and generosity, as well as the love he brought to those around him.
Is Kevin J. O’Connor still alive?
View this post on Instagram
Kevin J. O’Connor played Sammy DeSoto, the boyfriend whose wild streak gives Annelle a scare before he wins her over and marries her. He was a Chicago native who had already played Michael Fitzsimmons in Peggy Sue Got Married, and he went on to a long career as one of Hollywood’s busiest character actors. He was the sniveling Beni Gabor in The Mummy in 1999 and Igor in Van Helsing, and he played Henry, the man posing as Daniel Day-Lewis’s long-lost brother, in There Will Be Blood.
Yes, he is alive. Born November 15, 1963, he is 62, and he is about to bring Beni back from the dead, since Deadline reported this year that he has signed on for the next Mummy film, set for October 2027. Shelby’s husband has had an even steadier run on television.
Is Dylan McDermott still alive?
View this post on Instagram
Dylan McDermott was the handsome lawyer Jackson Latcherie, who marries Shelby at the start of the film and becomes the father of her baby boy. The role came early for him, and stardom followed. He spent seven seasons as attorney Bobby Donnell on The Practice, which won him a Golden Globe, and he later worked through four seasons of American Horror Story.
Yes, McDermott is alive. He was born October 26, 1961, and turns 65 this coming Monday. He took over the lead of CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted in 2022, and Deadline reported in August 2026 that he has joined the cast of Love Love, a tennis romantic comedy from Amazon MGM. The actress who played Annelle had to fight just to get her part.
Is Daryl Hannah still alive?
Ross first wanted Daryl Hannah, the mermaid from Splash, to play Shelby, but she wanted the shy, jittery Annelle. “He was like, ‘No, absolutely not, I don’t see it,'” she told People in 2024. She begged for an audition and showed up so transformed that “he didn’t recognize me.” What stayed with her was the company. Earlier sets had been “competitive and vicious,” she said, according to Entertainment Weekly, but on Steel Magnolias “it was really wonderful to have those women be so supportive and encouraging.” You can read more of Hannah’s memories from the film’s 35th anniversary.
Yes, Hannah is alive. Born December 3, 1960, she is 65. She married Neil Young in 2018, directed his 2025 concert documentary Coastal, and in March 2026 wrote a New York Times essay denouncing her portrayal in the FX series Love Story as false. Next comes the man who spent the film shooting at birds.
Is Shirley MacLaine still alive?
“I’m not crazy, M’Lynn. I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years!” Shirley MacLaine growled that line as Ouiser Boudreaux, and it earned her a BAFTA nomination. She had won her Oscar six years earlier for Terms of Endearment, and her career stretched all the way back to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry in 1955.
Yes, MacLaine is alive. Born April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia, she is 92. In 2024 she published The Wall of Life, a book of photographs and stories from her career, and this past August she recorded a rare video message for a Southampton Playhouse screening of her 1969 musical Sweet Charity. She joked that the cast worked hard on it but it didn’t do well at the box office, KATV reported. The youngest star in the cast had the hardest summer of anyone.
Is Julia Roberts still alive?
Julia Roberts was only 20 when she played Shelby, and she got the part after Meg Ryan left for When Harry Met Sally. Harling knew the moment she walked in. “That smile lit everything up and I said, ‘That’s my sister,'” he told the Daily Mail. Ross was tough on her, and her co-stars noticed. Roberts won a Golden Globe and earned her first Oscar nomination for the role, then became the biggest star in Hollywood a few months later with Pretty Woman. She won the Academy Award for Erin Brockovich in 2001.
Yes, Roberts is alive. Born October 28, 1967, in Atlanta, she is 58 and turns 59 next week. She and her husband, cinematographer Daniel Moder, have three children, and in January 2026 she earned a Golden Globe nomination for After the Hunt. The woman who stood up for her on that set has had the biggest year of all.
Is Sally Field still alive?
Sally Field played M’Lynn Eatenton, the mother who gives Shelby a kidney and then, in the cemetery scene, breaks down in rage and grief until Clairee hands Ouiser over to be slugged. Off camera, she was Roberts’s protector. “Herb was very, very, very hard on Julia,” Field told Vulture. “We would all rally around Julia, because she was the baby.” Ross could not push Field around the same way. “If you’re gonna be mean to me,” she said, “then you’re gonna find a warrior.”
Yes, Field is alive, and she is still winning. Born November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, she is 79 and turns 80 next month. In September she won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for Netflix’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, and the Los Angeles Times reported that the win made her the oldest performer ever to take that category. It was her fourth Emmy and her first since 2007, and you can read more about Sally Field’s record-setting night. Thirty-seven years after she broke down in that Louisiana cemetery and then pulled herself back up, the actress who played M’Lynn is still proving the “steel” part of the title.