Hayden Panettiere opened up about a disturbing situation when she was 18 that involved a close industry associate she trusted and a "very famous" actor.
The 36-year-old Nashville actress talked about the incident, which she also mentions in her upcoming memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, on Monday’s episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.
Near the 27-minute mark in the video linked here, Panettiere described an incident where she was led by somebody she had “grown to trust and see as a protector” walked to a downstairs area of a boat and into a room where an undressed and supposedly well-known Hollywood actor lay in the bed. She described the outing as initially normal and unexpected in its escalation.
“I was quite literally walked down—and I had been having a great time. There was no hints of anything like that happening … I was shocked," she prefaced. “It was presented as though it was like a surprise, and it was this very small room.”
‘She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,” Panettiere recalled. “He had his hands [clasped behind his head] like this was just, you know, an average day for him and this is something that happens all the time."
She continued, "I waited for her to leave and I mean that lion in me, that fire in me, that my hair stood on end and I became ferocious. Like, ‘This is not happening.’ But I had nowhere to hide.”
Panettiere said she “bolted” out of the room and hid “wherever I could think of” on the boat.
“There was no jumping off and swimming away … I realized there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation [and] that this was nothing new to them.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Panettiere said that despite having “lived such a huge life,” she thought she was “so mature” at 18 years old.
“Even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions [and] safe decisions—I wasn't capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me," she prefaced. “It wasn't until I found myself in predicaments that I realized my perspective completely shifted, and I realized that I was in danger. But by the time l'd realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”
She concluded by reflecting on the betrayal of trust: "[It’s] disappointing when somebody lets you down like that—and l'd been let down so much before. When you really find somebody that you trust, you hold on to them for dear life and you feel so lucky. So to be betrayed like that is just an awful feeling.”
Hayden Panettiere’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning hits stores on May 19.
