Actor Hayden Panettiere, who shot to fame with the success of her hit TV show, ‘Heroes’, has opened up about troubling experiences from her early years in Hollywood. In her memoir titled ‘This Is Me: A Reckoning’, she detailed shocking incidents in her personal and professional life that she experienced while making her way in the entertainment industry.In one chapter, Panettiere recounted a shocking incident with an Oscar-winning actor, who exposed himself to her while at an intimate gathering. Recalling the incident that took place when she was just 19, the actress alleged that she had attended a gathering at a friend’s apartment in Los Angeles. She claimed that the gathering felt more like “a meeting” than a party, that also saw several older men in attendance.“These men seemed to be a little too comfortable together, like they knew something I didn’t,” Panettiere wrote and revealed that as she attempted to leave the apartment, one of the men followed her. “There’s a big wad of gum on my pants,” he allegedly told the teen while pointing to himself, she said and added, “I looked down and recoiled.”Panettiere recalled in the memoir, “This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.”She went on to state that although the man in question did not physically harm her, she immediately fled the apartment. “Up to that moment, men in Hollywood had always been kind and respectful around me,” she wrote and added, “There may have been a peck on the lips here and an inappropriate comment there, but nothing had crossed a line.”Reflecting further on the incident, the actress added, “The gum on the pants, however, was a head-scratcher. 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.”The former ‘Heroes’ star also recalled an alleged incident aboard a yacht when her friend, identified as Stella McAmis, allegedly told her to ‘get into bed’ with a famous British singer when she was just 18 years old.
