Hayden Panettiere has made startling claims about her mother in her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. The 36-year-old actress alleges that her mother, Lesley Vogel, used superglue to reattach her fallen baby teeth to a dental flipper so she could continue landing acting jobs.
Panettiere, who began acting as a baby, wrote that she lost her right front tooth at age eight. A dentist fitted her with a removable flipper to fill the gap, recommending Fixodent adhesive. But when she lost another tooth during a shoot in Chicago, her mother took a different approach.
In the memoir, Panettiere recalls her mother saying, “Give me the tooth you lost. And cross your fingers.” Vogel then dabbed superglue onto the tooth and affixed it to the flipper. After ten seconds, the glue dried and Panettiere put the flipper back in. She said the fix worked, though it gave her a lisp, which she accepted to land the job.
The Nashville star also revealed that she ended her professional relationship with her mother as a teenager due to ongoing tensions. She told Us Weekly that they do not currently have a relationship, but she leaves the door open for reconciliation.
