Hayden Panettiere has described how a ‘well-respected’ Oscar winner exposed himself to her at a party when she was just 19 in her new memoir.
This Is Me: A Reckoning details the 36-year-old’s uncomfortable and disturbing experiences from her early career acting in Hollywood.
Recounting the incident which took place at a Los Angeles party, the Oscar-winning actor is said to have exposed himself by claiming to have gum on his trousers, revealing his testicles from an unzipped fly.
Panettiere wrote that after spending time making small talk with a group of men at the gathering, she began feeling increasingly uncomfortable and decided it was time to go.
According to the memoir, the man, who she does not name, approached her as she was putting on her coat and pointed to what he claimed was gum.
She said: ‘I looked down and recoiled. This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.’
Though the actress said the moment did not physically harm her, the interaction left her rattled.
‘The gum on the pants, however, was a head-scratcher,’ she wrote.
‘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 said she was left feeling deeply uneasy at the party, which was predominantly attended by older men.
She also said that she left quickly and has never spoken about it until now.
Up until that point, Panettiere said that she generally found men in Hollywood to be kind and respectful, which made the actor’s actions so shocking to her.
In her memoir, the Bring It On and Nashville star also described another distressing event where a friend allegedly forced her into bed with a naked famous man during a yacht trip in France.
‘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?’ Panettiere said.
‘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 actress said her ‘perspective completely shifted’ once she realized she was ‘in danger’, but she said she was already ‘quite literally out to sea’.
According to the actress, the person who brought her onto the boat was someone she trusted deeply.
‘She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous,’ Panettiere said.
‘There was no jumping off and swimming away. And there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. I realized that this was nothing new to them.’
This Is Me: A Reckoning by Hayden Panettiere is available now, wherever books are sold.
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