Hayden Panettiere Gets 'Brutally Honest': Child Stardom, Crushing Loss, More
Hayden Panettiere was only 8 months old when she signed with Wilhelmina Models and 11 months when she booked her first commercial. Pushed by her momager, Lesley , she excelled as a child actor, and rapid success, pressure and a knack for onscreen vulnerability shaped her into a teenage people pleaser who found herself less than pleased with headlines she read about herself. “It really started when I was 16 years old,” she explains to Us , with “people creating stories that were false about me. There have been a lot of preconceived ideas, and I’ve always tried to be open and honest. I felt like there was a big target on my back and all that mattered was what would make the biggest headlines and shock people the most.” What Panettiere, now 36, actually survived in real life is shocking to learn, and she reveals her life’s most private moments in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning . For the first time, she goes in-depth about her painful breakups from boyfriend and Heroes c...