Hayden Panettiere came of age in Hollywood, which wasn’t an entirely safe place for a young girl, according to her new memoir.
According to People, her new memoir This is Me: A Reckoning, features the actress recalling some of the more disturbing situations she found herself in, including a story about an Oscar-winning actor and director who exposed himself to her without consent at a party when she was 19.
The incident allegedly happened at the end of the party, after Panettiere exited an increasingly uncomfortable conversation with a group of men. As she was putting on her coat to go, the man approached her under the pretense that gum was stuck to his pants.
“I looked down and recoiled," Panettiere wrote. “This well-respected, award-winning actor's testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.”
She continued, "The gum on the pants, however, was a head-scratcher. It hadn't hurt me, and I was sure it was a drunken joke, but I'd never seen a grown man do something like that. I was shocked."
Panettiere chose to keep the incident to herself, feeling “the moment had passed.” At the time, she chalked up the behavior to certain older men simply having “no manners.” It’s unclear who the man was.
The 36-year-old began acting when she was 11-months old, starring in an ad for a Playskool toy train in 1990. In the 90s, she went on to land bigger roles on soap operas like One Life to Live and Guiding Light before her breakthrough role in the sci-fi drama series Heroes in 2006, where she played Claire Bennet, a high school cheerleader with regenerative healing powers. In 2012, she also landed a major role as Juliette Barnes in the musical drama series, Nashville.
Her memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning, is out now.
