Hayden Panettiere has opened up about an unsettling experience that occurred during the height of her career.
The former Disney star and 2000’s actress, known for her roles in Heroes and Bring It On: All or Nothing, recalled being “told to perform sexual acts” with a famous “older man” she met through a friend at age 18.
Watch the video above.
Panettiere, 36, reflected on the “shocking” incident in an episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.
“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, scientifically, your frontal lobes don’t develop until we’re what, 25, 26?” she opened up to host Jay Shetty.
“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.”
The now mum-of-one alleged the incident took place in a “very small room” on a boat when she was 18.
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She also opens up about the traumatic experience her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
The star remembered having a great time on the boat when she was led down the stairs by a trusted friend as if she had a “surprise”.
Waiting on the bed was an “undressed man who was very famous”, Panettiere revealed.
“This was just an average day for him… I waited for her to leave and that lion in me, that fire in me, my hair stood on end and I became ferocious,” the star recalled on the podcast.
“I was like, ‘This is not happening’ but I had nowhere to hide, I bolted … By the time I realised I was in danger I was quite literally out to sea.”
Also in the episode, the Remember the Titans star clapped back at claims she “abandoned” her then three-year-old daughter Kaya in 2018.
At the time, the actress was struggling with addiction and post-partum depression.
“The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking,” she said on the podcast.
She explained her daughter’s father and ex-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, asked if Kaya could live with him in Ukraine at age two.
While it was an “incredibly difficult” decision, when the actress “finally got healthy” she couldn’t imagine pulling her daughter out of a life she had created overseas.
“In no way [does] she feel abandoned,” she added.
Panettiere dated Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, 50, on and off for nine years from 2009 to 2018.
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