Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has recently made a splash in the headlines thanks to her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. In the book, the actor accused a famous Oscar winner of doing something disturbing at a party.
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Panettiere says that she attended a private party with a friend at 19. When she was preparing to leave, an Oscar-winning actor and director exposed himself to her at the party. The Nashville star says she decided to leave after feeling uncomfortable at the party.
The actor approached Panettiere while she was going to get her coat.
"I looked down and recoiled," Panettiere wrote. "This well-respected, award-winning actor's testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly."
The Nashville star chose not to name who the Oscar winner was. But she does say that the incident left her feeling rattled. "The gum on the pants, however, was a head-scratcher," she writes. "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."
'Nashville' Star Tells All
Recently, the actor discussed other issues she had in the industry. When she was 18, she was placed in a bedroom on a boat with an "undressed" older adult.
"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."
She describes the ordeal as frightening. The actor said the person who brought her on the boat was someone that she thought was her protector.
"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."
Again, no names were mentioned. That was intentional on the actor's part.
She said, "Because it was a bad look for them and [the people I didn't name] were generally people within my industry. They're people I could run into again. I didn't want to put myself in that position. Things happened a long time ago, but it was to protect me and my company from being sued by some very pissed-off famous people."
