Hayden Panettiere is pulling back the curtain on the ugly side of growing up famous — and her claims are deeply disturbing.
The former child star, now opening up in her new memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, says she was just 19 years old when a powerful Hollywood figure allegedly cornered her at a party and exposed himself.
Panettiere does not name the man, but she describes him as a well-known, Oscar-winning actor and director.
According to the actress, she was at the party with a friend and getting ready to leave when the man approached her with a strange excuse. He allegedly claimed he had “gum” stuck to his pants.
When Panettiere looked down, she says she was stunned by what she saw.
“This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly,” she wrote, according to People.
The Nashville star said she was confused at first, then shocked. She described the moment as bizarre and unsettling, even if she initially tried to brush it off as a drunken joke.
“It hadn’t hurt me, and I was sure it was a drunken joke,” she recalled. “But I’d never seen a grown man do something like that.”
For Panettiere, the disturbing incident was only one piece of a much larger story about being a young woman in Hollywood.
The actress became famous at a very early age, appearing on One Life to Live and Guiding Light before moving into movie roles in Remember the Titans, Tiger Cruise, Ice Princess, Bring It On: All or Nothing, and Scream 4.
She later became a household name as Claire Bennet on NBC’s Heroes, before starring as troubled country singer Juliette Barnes on ABC’s Nashville.
But behind the red carpets and hit shows, Panettiere says she was often placed in frightening situations around powerful men.
In another chilling story from the book, Panettiere recalls being 18 years old and on a boat when she says a woman she considered a friend led her into a room with a very famous, undressed man.
The actress said the woman physically put her in the bed next to him and allegedly told her to perform sexual acts.
Panettiere said the man acted as if nothing about the situation was unusual.
The actress said she immediately knew she had to get away.
“I was like, ‘This is not happening,’” she said while discussing the ordeal on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.
But escaping was not simple. Panettiere said she was trapped on a boat with nowhere safe to go.
“I had nowhere to hide,” she recalled. “I bolted. I hid wherever I could think to hide on a boat. There was no jumping off and swimming away.”
Looking back, Panettiere said the experience helped her understand just how vulnerable she really was, despite feeling mature at the time.
She said that when she was younger, she believed she could make smart and safe decisions. Now, she sees things differently.
“Even though I felt I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me,” she said.
The actress explained that the danger only became clear once she was already in the middle of it.
“It wasn’t until I found myself in predicaments that I realized, my perspective completely shifted, and I realized I was in danger,” she said. “By the time I realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”
Panettiere also revealed why she chose not to name the famous men involved in the book.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said she wanted to protect herself from legal trouble and from possibly encountering those people again in the industry.
“They’re people I could run into again,” she said. “I didn’t want to put myself in that position.”
She added that while the alleged incidents happened years ago, she still feared being sued by “very pissed-off famous people.”
For longtime fans, the revelations are a heartbreaking look at what Panettiere says was happening behind the scenes while she was building a career in front of the world.
Her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, was released May 19 and marks one of the most personal chapters yet for the actress, who has spent nearly her entire life in the spotlight.