Hayden Panettiere claims mom used superglue for her baby teeth when they fell out for specific reason
Topics: Hollywood, Parenting, Film and TV
William Morgan
Featured Image Credit: ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Hollywood, Parenting, Film and TV
Landing an acting gig when you don't even have your adult teeth requires just two things, a can-do attitude and parents who would give their left leg to have their child on the big screen.
At least, that's the vibe you get from Hayden Panettiere's new tell-all autobiography, This Is Me: A Reckoning, where she lays bare just how bizarre it is to be a child star and exactly what it takes to go the distance in Hollywood.
The 36-year-old Heroes star was always going to end up in front of the camera, with mom Lesley Vogel, herself a former soap opera actor, getting her a job in an advert for toy trains when she was just 11 months old.
And she didn't get much of a break from there, with her memoir sharing how she was pulled from pillar to post as her mom got her into the family business. Panettiere even recalled her mom supergluing her baby teeth back into her mouth for a TV spot.
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Panettiere appearing on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' in 1996, when she was just seven (Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Vogel was relentless in her pursuit of roles for young Panettiere, landing her spots in adverts as well as soap operas like The Guiding Light and One Life to Live - all before she was 10 years old.
But while this dogged determination saw her child turn into a young star of film and TV, in This is Me, Panettiere shares how her time in the limelight as a child has led her to having a no contact relationship with her mom.
One incident in the memoir is of particular note, from when the young star was starring in commercials and going through that natural gap-toothed phase of childhood when all of your baby teeth fall out.
However, casting panels and directors are just as likely to replace you if your smile does not match the headshot. So, according to Panettiere, Vogel came up with a MacGyver solution - supergluing the teeth back in.
It all started when she was taken to a dentist so that she could get a prop tooth to cover her first major gap. “A nice dental assistant took a mold of my top teeth, and Dr. Bob explained to me and Mom that a flipper is a retainer with an acrylic ‘palate,’” Panettiere wrote.
Panettiere has also starred in slasher horror 'Scream IV' (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
She continued: “However, because a flipper doesn’t straighten anything, there are no wires. Instead, stuck to the front of the palate is an artificial tooth that fits squarely where the missing tooth used to be. When I put the flipper in my mouth, no one would know I’d lost a tooth.”
The dentist advised her mom to use Fixodent, commonly used for dentures, to keep the tooth in place. But later, when they were on a set in Chicago, another of young Panettiere's teeth fell out of her head.
Thinking quickly, her mom said: “Give me the tooth you lost. And cross your fingers.” Panettiere recalls: “I dutifully handed Mom the tooth and watched her squeeze a dab of superglue onto it. Then she affixed the tooth to the flipper.”
And, it worked.
She shared: “Partly in horror and partly out of respect for the MacGyver-like skills I had no idea she possessed, I stepped back to give Mom some room.
“A few seconds later, Mom handed me the flipper, now containing two teeth, and I slipped it tentatively into my mouth. A little voice in my head told me that if the superglue wasn’t dry, I was going to live with this flipper for all eternity.
"I closed my mouth and licked my top teeth. Then I opened my mouth and smiled.”
While this was an example of the high pressure she lived under as a kid, Panettiere couldn't help but note with pride: “Lisp be damned, I got the job.”
Panettiere has fallen out with her mom since becoming an adult, sharing her resentment at giving her parents her hard-earned cash (Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic)
Panettiere's mom Lesley Vogel, 70, has not held anything back in response to her daughter's memoir, blasting her superstar child as 'entitled' and claiming that she is dishing the dirt 'partially to sell books'.
In her response, supplied to Page Six, Vogel was brutal about her own daughter, saying: “There is a personality ‘style’ which manifests as a need for control, entitlement and a lack of empathy.
"The major fear is that someone will see through the mask they present to the world and discover who they truthfully are.”
By the sounds of it, Vogel and Panettiere have not been on speaking terms since her brother's tragic death from a heart abnormality, aged 28, in 2023. Vogel said: “After 20 years of trauma, I took the advice of professionals and chose the no-contact route. As many parents of entertainment children [know], we are all too familiar with the painful observation of watching the self-destructive paths they sometimes choose.
"No parent hopes for this scenario; we want our children to be the best of themselves and live a peaceful, joyful life!
“Sadly, this is out of our control. You cannot save someone who does not want to be saved. Radical acceptance is the most difficult challenge any parent must embrace. Unfortunately, I have seen a great deal of such in my life experience.”
Panettiere and Vogel in 2009 (Peter Carrette Archive/Getty Images)
“It was so false,” Panettiere, 36, told Entertainment Tonight, “When people ask me about the relationship, if there’s any hope for the future, I always say I leave that door cracked open in case.”
She also said: “Because who doesn’t want a relationship with their mother? You pray for it and hope it eventually comes. But she slammed that door pretty hard in my face. She has very clearly prioritized herself, which I should not be shocked by.”
Panettiere has also spoken about how her difficult relationship with her mom pushed her, but also broke her. “It’s so ingrained in me to be a people pleaser. I went on set, and it was all about being professional, nailing it and always hitting my mark," she said.
"I had to be perfect. It was nice to hear positive feedback from people like the directors or producers, but without [my mom’s], nothing else mattered,” she told US Weekly ahead of her memoir's release.
“I felt like I had an identity crisis at 12 years old. I didn’t know who I was.”