Hayden Panettiere details moment of 'danger' when she was placed in bed with 'very famous undressed' man
Hayden Panettiere says that a person she thought she could trust put her 'in danger' when she was just 18 years old.
Panettiere, now aged 36, has been in the spotlight since she was a child, first appearing in ABC's One Life to Live in 1994 at the age of five.
By the time she was 16, she'd featured in at least 20 films and TV shows, including Racing Stripes, Ice Princess, and Disney's A Bug's Life, as well as Malcolm in the Middle – which was recently rebooted for a four-part special – and Law & Order.
With his vast amount of work experience in mind, by the time Panettiere turned 18 she thought that she was 'so mature', she said in a new interview with Jay Shetty on his On Purpose Podcast.
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"The fact that I was 18, even though I’d lived such a huge life and I thought I was oh so mature at 18," the Nashville star said. "Scientifically, your frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26?"
Panettiere further noted: "So, even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn’t capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me."
She then went on to recall a time she felt that she was 'in danger' that caused her then 18-year-old perspective to 'completely shift'.
"It wasn't until I found myself in predicaments that I realized like it it my my perspective completely shifted and I realized that I was in danger," she told Shetty. "But by the time I'd realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea."
Panettiere then went on to recall a time that she was on a boat and someone whom she saw as her 'protector' walked her into a room and 'physically put me in the bed next to this this undressed man who was very famous'.
The man, who the actress did not name, was apparently sat waiting for her with his hands casually behind his head.
"My hair stood on end and I became ferocious," Panettiere went on to say about what happened next. "I was like, this is not happening. But I had nowhere to hide."
She then 'bolted' and ultimately did find somewhere hide on the boat.
The Heroes star continued: "There was no jumping off and swimming away. [...] I realized that there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation – that this was nothing new to them."
Her interview on Shetty's podcast comes ahead of the release of her memoir 'This Is Me: A Reckoning', which is scheduled to hit shelves on May 19.
Niamh Shackleton