Hayden Panettiere reflected on the painful decision to relinquish custody of her daughter during a battle with addiction in a memoir published just three months before her death at the age of 36.
The Hollywood star, widely recognized for her standout performances in Heroes and Nashville, was pronounced dead yesterday at an apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina.
Her deeply personal memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, arrived in both the UK and US on May 19, offering an unflinching look at her life behind the spotlight, including the heartbreak of being apart from her only child.
In the book, Panettiere opened up about the depression she experienced after the birth of her daughter Kaya, now 11, and how her struggles ultimately led to custody being given to her former fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, 50.
The actress, who entered the entertainment industry as a child, also recounted disturbing experiences from her early years in Hollywood, including allegedly being placed in bed with a British singer and a separate incident in which an Oscar-winning actor exposed himself to her.
Hayden Panettiere’s candid memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning was published on May 19
Put into bed with British singer
Panettiere wrote about one unsettling episode when she was 19, claiming a friend encouraged her to have sex with an unnamed British singer who was in his 30s at the time.
According to the memoir, the friend brought Panettiere to the south of France in 2009, where she boarded a superyacht the friend had rented for the week.
One day her friend told her to go downstairs with her. They entered a cabin, where she ‘saw a famous thirtysomething British singer songwriter lying in a bed’. She described him as shirtless and ‘from the waist down, he was covered by bedsheets’.
The friend then ‘leaned down and whispered in my ear: ‘I want you to get in bed with him. He has a huge d***.’ Panettiere did as she was told, before her friend left.
But before anything happened, the actress soon felt her heart pounding and told the man: ‘Look… I don’t know what she said to you, but this is not going to happen.’
She then jumped out of the bed and towards the door, running into the hall and toward her room. She booked a hotel and started packing her bags before leaving.
Panettiere said of her friend: ‘She’d confided in me, pampered me and treated me like her best friend – then turned around and treated me like a call girl.’
Hayden Panettiere in New York in July 2009, soon after the incident on the yacht that spring
Oscar winner exposed himself
Panettiere also explained the distressing moment an ‘Oscar winning actor and director’ exposed himself to her months earlier, when she was still aged 19.
The actress said the ‘actor and director’ showed his genitals to her at a private party – organised by the same friend who invited her to the yacht.
Panettiere was chatting with a group of men ‘in their forties and fifties’ at the party, when she ‘sensed these men’s eyes on me and it made me uncomfortable.’
She felt like a ‘young commodity ripe for the picking in that moment and decided to leave – when one of the men approached her as she was putting on her coat.
Panettiere said the man – whom she did not identify – claimed to have a ‘big wad of gum on his pants’. But she wrote: ‘I looked down and recoiled. This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.’
She did not tell her friend about the incident because she believed ‘the moment had passed’ and ‘assumed some older men had just grown up with no manners.’
Struggling with depression
After giving birth to her daughter Kaya, Panettiere began haemorrhaging before she underwent seven blood transfusions and surgery to repair vessels that began to fail.
And in the months following the birth in 2014, Panettiere faced a significant struggle with depression, explaining in her book how they did not bond as she had hoped.
The actress, who was aged 25 at the time, wrote: ‘I’d always heard that mothers feel an instant rush of love the moment they lay their eyes on their baby, but I felt nothing.’
Panettiere said she was finding it difficult to soothe her daughter and understand what she was experiencing, admitting her ‘natural optimism and pep’ had vanished.
In one incident, she worried that she had accidentally hurt Kaya while taking her out of the bath, but explained: ‘It wasn’t panic that was sitting in my chest.
‘It was nothing. A total blackout of emotion, like my soul was dead. I wasn’t myself, yet the problem was I didn’t know what I was supposed to be.’
Hayden Panettiere hugs her daughter Kaya in a photo she posted to Instagram in March 2017
Medication causing problems
Panettiere was diagnosed with postpartum depression and began having treatment when Kaya was four months old – but her medication caused further issues.
She explained how this kept her from ‘cracking’, adding: ‘To help me with my insomnia I had meds, the really powerful kind they’d prescribed me in treatment.’
However, Panettiere said this left her feeling like a ‘zombie’ – explaining: ‘They had a catch: if I didn’t take them, I couldn’t sleep. If I did, I slept too much.’
She also wrote: ‘I walked into rehab addicted to one substance, and I walked out, completely dependent on something else.’
The actress further explained how ‘anxiety buzzed inside me like a fluorescent light’, which she said was ‘keeping me reactive, on edge and full of dread’.
Alcohol addiction
Panettiere began turning to alcohol to cope with her depression after giving birth, and said she once poured so much wine into her glass that it ‘almost overflowed.’
The problem worsened when she returned to acting in TV drama Nashville, needing a drink just to get out of bed. She wrote: ‘It’s 6am and I’m trying to get drunk.’
Panettiere added: ‘The first thing I’d thought of when I woke up was alcohol. Not my child, not my job, and not the rest of my life.’
‘I needed a drink to function – at 6am – and that was f***ed. If I didn’t get some help as soon as possible, I was f***ed.’
She also said: ‘I’ve always strived to be a positive person, but I grieve all the hours I lose to addiction, my broken relationships and my loved ones who are no longer here.’
Giving up custody of Kaya
Panettiere discussed her heartbreaking decision in 2018 to give up custody of her daughter Kaya, now 11, to her ex-fiancé, Ukrainian former boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
Kaya had lived with her father full-time from a young age amid the actress’s struggles with substance addiction and mental health.
As these battles continued, the actress decided to sign over custody of her daughter to Klitschko who was not living in the same country as Panettiere at the time.
She said: ‘I remember every second of that day. Every f**ing second. No mother could forget a single thing about the day she signed her child away.’
Panettiere believes she had enough money to fight a custody battle but feared this would have destroyed her, given she was still in recovery at that point.
She decided not to celebrate the series finale of TV series Nashville, saying: ‘I couldn’t pretend that this chapter of my life was something to memorialise.’
After selling her home in Nashville, Panettiere said she now had ‘no work, no plan for work anytime soon, no boyfriend, and no Kaya to care for.’
Hayden Panettiere and Wladimir Klitschko with their daughter Kaya, now 11, in July 2016
Living without her daughter
Panettiere wrote movingly about the eight years of trying to be a mother having given up custody of her child Kaya, who was just three at the time.
The actress said: ‘Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, and it’s hard to describe the layers of emotion – including sadness, resentment, and anger – I’ve felt because of it.
‘I grieve that I’m not the mother I thought I’d be and definitely not the mother I want to be (trust me, no one should ever have to raise a child on FaceTime), and although I miss Kaya so much my heart aches, I know how blessed I am to be her mom.
‘She is the greatest gift of my life, with all the best parts of her father and me, and, today, I believe I have the opportunity to be a different kind of parent than most.’
Taking full responsibility
Panettiere explained how she takes full responsibility for her shortcomings to her daughter – insisting she does not blame her former partner Klitschko.
The actress also described the Ukrainian former boxer, who competed from 1996 to 2017, as ‘one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met’.
She wrote: ‘She didn’t ask to be born into the limelight or my chaos, and she didn’t get to choose her parents. I want her to have every choice that I didn’t, including the ability to live a private life.
‘So out of respect for her right to normalcy, my stories of motherhood will be through my eyes only, and I’ll keep personal details of her life to a minimum.
‘I also want to make clear that I don’t blame Wlad for any of my wrongs; I take full responsibility for my part in our relationship and my shortcomings as a mom. Wlad is one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met and a true hero in so many ways.’
Panettiere has said she takes full responsibility for her shortcomings to her daughter Kaya
Hopes for the future
Despite her struggles with addiction and depression, Panettiere spoke positively about the latest stage of her personal journey and how experiences had affected her.
She said: ‘Life can shake you up and tear you down, but even when you’re at your worst, there’s hope and you have an opportunity to rebuild.’
Speaking about her ‘years in treatment’, Panettiere also insisted she had ‘concluded that the only thing I can change is myself and the person I want to be’.
She also referred to ‘lifequakes’, which are defined as a big and often-unexpected shift or crisis in life, popularised in author Bruce Feiler’s book Life Is in the Transitions.
And Panettiere said: ‘I’m far from perfect, but my life quakes and moments of struggle are little miracles that have helped me grow.’
‘This Is Me: A Reckoning’ by Hayden Panettiere is available in hardback for £22
