Hayden Panettiere says an “Oscar-winning actor and director” exposed himself to her when she was teenager.
According to the 36-year-old actress, the unnamed man approached her as she was leaving a party and claimed he had chewing gum stuck on his pants.
“I looked down and recoiled,” Panettiere wrote in an excerpt of her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning obtained by People. “This well-respected, award-winning actor’s testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly.”
She was 19 years old at the time. Panettiere dismissed the encounter as “a drunken joke” that left her shocked. She didn’t mention the incident to the friend with whom she’d attended the party.
Panettiere described the culprit as a well-respected figure in the movie business. It was her conclusion that “some older men had just grown up with no manners.”
She also wrote about an awkward encounter with a famous 30-something British musician that occurred when she was 18 years old.
According to the Heroes star, she was attending a yacht party in the south of France when a friend guided her to a private cabin where that unidentified celebrity was lying in a bed at least half naked.
“Is he naked under there?” she recalled wondering.
Panetiette said she climbed into bed, then gathered herself and told the singer-songwriter she wasn’t sure what her friend told him, “but this is not going to happen.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
