Hayden Panettiere To Expose The Real Life Trauma That Happened To Her As A Child Star: 'People Will Be Surprised'

Hayden Panettiere is getting ready to release her memoir, and it sounds like it’s going to be absolutely explosive.

Hayden’s upcoming book is titled This Is Me: A Reckoning, and it delves into her entire life — addiction, love, loss, family life, everything. But one main part of the book will be discussing her life as a child star, and her complicated relationship with her mom, Lesley Vogel.

While speaking to US Weekly in an interview that dropped on Wednesday, the actress got real about her child stardom struggles:

“It really started when I was 16 years old, 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.”

In fact, she confessed a shocking time in her life when a rep of hers gave her “happy pills” from Mexico during press for her series Heroes. She would’ve only been in her late teens or early twenties at the time:

“I trusted her wholeheartedly. I never in a million years thought to protect myself or question it.”

So scary…

While chatting with the outlet, she was asked what about this book was most intimidating, and she said the stories about her trauma were difficult to write:

“I thought the whole thing was very scary. I talk about traumatic moments and things that that people don’t even know about. The abuse I went through at the hands of people that were supposed to be there to protect me. Admitting to all of the things that I did. I knew if I was going to do this, I wanted to be brutally, painfully honest.”

So brave of her to do! Especially considering what she’s already hinted at in her book. Per the outlet, the actress recalled an audition from when she was just 4 years old in her book. When they asked if she’d ever talked to her mom about the struggles from her childhood, she said:

“I feel like this is the first time that I’ve been able to. I was so scared of her that approaching her and being honest about my feelings was not going to get me any positive reaction. This is my way of doing it.”

She also admitted she doesn’t have a relationship with Lesley at all — but that doesn’t mean she’s not open to it:

“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day. It’s hard for me to say, but I’ve chosen to be brutally honest.”

Looking back at her life, the Bring It On star said being a child actor made it very hard for her to differentiate herself from her roles:

“I felt like I had an identity crisis at 12 years old. I didn’t know who I was. I remember sitting in my bedroom and going, ‘I can be all of these different characters. I’m going on auditions, and I feel like I’m pulling these characters. They’re different parts of me. But who am I, just naturally?'”

Hayden also touched on “trigger tears” and how it had a “profound impact” on her development:

“I think I really realized on Nashville, when I was working 10 months out of the year. [As] a child, it was so easy for me to cry. When people realized that I was so good at crying, they made me do it all the time. I went from a child being able to think about something so simple that would make me emotional, but [as] I got older … I had to think about things that were so gut-wrenching and it was so constant that I was like, ‘How can this not be having a profound impact on me, and a negative one at that?'”

We can only imagine what kind of damage that could do to someone so young.

And even with all this, it only touches the tip of the iceberg with what Hayden is sharing with the world. She told the outlet: