Hayden Panettiere signed a bumper six-figure deal for her memoir last year, vowing to take no prisoners. Her battles with addiction, fractured family relations, and tumultuous personal life were all expected to be laid bare. When the book was finally published just three months before her death aged 36, even her closest friends were left shocked by its contents.
“It was almost like she had nothing to lose…..she just thought ‘f*** it…I don’t care anymore,” says one pal. “The brakes were well and truly off.”
Mother-Daughter Feud Exposed
It wasn’t simply the darkness of the revelations - including harrowing domestic violence claims - that took those around her aback. Instead, it was how many scores she appeared determined to settle along the way. One person in particular was firmly in the firing line: her own mother, Lesley Vogel.
Vogel, herself a former actress, managed her daughter’s career through childhood, including securing her first commercial when she was 11 months old. Her business acumen saw her secure deals for her daughter aged four in US TV show One Life To Live, then at eight, another soap opera, Guiding Light. After landing her breakthrough role in superhero series Heroes, the relationship irrevocably broke down.
Panettiere is excoriating when it comes to the alleged conduct of her mum at the exact moment she decided to sever ties. She writes: “I asked Mom to come to my trailer on the Heroes set one day, and that’s where I broke the news. ‘Mom, I can’t work with you anymore,’ I said. ‘I just want you to be my mom now.’ I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I didn’t mention anything that had helped build the wall of resentment between us. All I wanted was to discover what it was like to have a ‘normal’ mother–daughter relationship, and that dynamic didn’t involve contracts, producers, boho tops, or drinking wine at industry parties. Mom picked up her purse, clenched her jaw, and looked straight at me. ‘You owe me,’ she answered. Then she turned around and walked out of my trailer. When I heard the click of the door, I took a deep breath, then burst into tears.”
The allegations were given a second lease of life on an exhaustive publicity blitz to accompany the book. Appearing on Jay Shetty’s podcast, she described being beset with anxiety in the aftermath of the estrangement. “Part of me was like, ‘Oh, I’m relieved that it was short, like, rip the Band-Aid off’ ” she says. “But then it was like this dark looming cloud over my head going, ‘What does she mean by I owe her? What form of payment is she expecting?’”
Mother Responds and Other Revelations
Vogel, who is in her 70s, refused to take the accusations lying down. In a brutal put-down of her daughter, she described the allegations as merely a vehicle to “sell books” and said “you cannot save someone who does not want to be saved.” She said after severing contact with her daughter, “the smear campaign begins; accusations, anger, belittling, gaslighting, etc. are the classic signs of this behavior style.” Lifting the lid on the depth of ill-feeling between the two women, she added: “After 20 years of trauma, I took the advice of professionals and chose the no-contact route. As many parents of entertainment children [know], we are all too familiar with the painful observation of watching the self-destructive paths they sometimes choose.”
Friends say that Panettiere was braced for such a reaction from her mother but “didn’t care.” One pal said: “She was quite cavalier about dropping bombs left, right and centre. It all washed over her.”
There were others in her sights too, including a series of anonymous Hollywood figures who she blames for her descent into addiction. This included an “Oscar-winning actor and director” who it's claimed cornered a 19-year-old Panettiere as she was about to leave a party and exposed himself to her. Then there was a harrowing incident in which a friend pressured her on a yacht to sleep with a “famous 30-something British singer-songwriter” who lay naked in bed. She told how she “settled in underneath the sheets” before changing her mind. Members of her team also allegedly fed her “happy pills” to cope with the pressures of the red carpet, and to make her more talkative.
Addiction and Troubled Relationships
Friends say it is little wonder that such experiences in her formative years saw her spiral into alcoholism. Stints in rehab followed, and things got so bad she even gave up custody of her daughter to her ex-fiance Wladimir Klitschko to help with her recovery. A pal said: “Everyone forgets just how young she was as she slid into addiction. She was vulnerable and seen as easy pickings by some figures in the industry.”
With such low self-esteem, troubling relationship choices followed. Her romance with Brian Hickerson, who she met in 2018, was rocked by multiple incidents of domestic violence. In April 2021, Hickerson was even sentenced to 45 days in county jail. Panettiere’s memoir makes for deeply uncomfortable reading. Recalling one violent episode, she says: “I felt my head snap back and smash into the wall, and a sharp pain shot down into my back. I braced my body to absorb the shock, then I closed my eyes. Clap. Brian slapped me hard, and a familiar sting radiated out from my cheek and across my entire body.”
They split up, but friends were left aghast by their recent reconciliation. In fact, police this week confirmed Hickerson was present when she died of an apparent overdose in a South Carolina apartment. Her mum spoke for many in her circle when she said: “This person in her life that we have been trying to get rid of for quite some time was with her at her death, and that was Brian Hickerson.” Describing her as an “amazingly talented person in so many departments”, Vogel added that the industry was “challenging….. and it’s not unusual for them to sadly find the wrong path.”
