Celebrity3 min(s) read
Published 16:19 19 May 2026 GMT
Actress Hayden Panettiere has recalled the horrifying moment where a "well-respected Oscar winner" crossed the line with her as a teenager.
Panettiere, 36, has previously spoken about being "undressed" and put into bed with a famous man while on a boat as an 18-year-old, as part of a podcast earlier this month.
The Heroes actress opened up about the harrowing experience, revealing that she experienced similarly disturbing incidents as a young woman in Hollywood.
She confirmed in a podcast episode with Jay Shetty that she was taken onto a boat by a friend before being led into a room with an older man.
Shetty said: “You write about a moment in your career where a friend of yours takes you onto a boat,
“You’re led to a room which has an older man in it and then basically told to perform sexual acts."
Panettiere would reveal in a passage from her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, that in addition to this, a well-known star would expose himself to her at a private party.
She explained in the book that she was speaking to a group of men in "their forties and fifties" at the party, which she attended with a friend.
Panettiere wrote that she "sensed these men's eyes on me and it made me uncomfortable."
She explained that she felt like a "young commodity ripe for the picking" at the time and decided to leave, though a man, who was said to be an "Oscar-winning actor and director" approached her as she was putting her coat on.
The anonymous figure then allegedly said he had a "big wad of gum on his pants," as the actress recalled: "I looked down and recoiled. This well-respected, award-winning actor's testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly."
As a result, Panettiere fled the party without saying goodbye to her friend, too shocked to do anything else.
"Up to that moment, men in Hollywood had always been kind and respectful around me. There may have been a peck on the lips here and an inappropriate comment there, but nothing had crossed a line," she recalled.
Despite the traumatic experience, the actress didn't tell her friend about what happened as she said "the moment had passed," and she simply assumed that "some older men had just grown up with no manners."
Panettiere reflected on how young and vulnerable she was as a young actress in Hollywood, despite believing she was mature enough to handle herself.
“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 said on Jay Shetty's podcast.
“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,” though by that point she was already trapped in the situation.
“I was quite literally out to sea,” she said.
Panettiere described the experience as “shocking,” explaining that nothing earlier in the evening had made her suspect something was wrong.
“There was no hints of anything like that happening,” she recalled. “So it took me by surprise.”
Panettiere’s memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, has been released today (May 19).
