SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Lots of famous movie and TV stars get their start in acting as kids, but Hayden Panettiere was really a child actor. You might even call her an infant actor.
HAYDEN PANETTIERE: Oh, I was eight months old when I started baby modeling. And I did my first commercial when I was 11 months old, which was actually a toy train commercial - Playskool toy train commercial.
PFEIFFER: After that, she kept acting steadily. Maybe you've seen her in "Heroes" or Scream or "Remember The Titans" or "Nashville," playing sassy country music starlet Juliette Barnes.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NASHVILLE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) There's a perception that you're...
PANETTIERE: (As Juliette Barnes) Wildly successful?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Look, legends have played the Ryman stage, people with long and storied careers. And considering the brevity of yours and your recent troubles, I would say that you should...
PANETTIERE: (As Juliette Barnes) I have kept this label relevant and made you a lot of money.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Juliette, hold on.
PANETTIERE: (As Juliette Barnes) You too.
PFEIFFER: Now, at age 36, Panettiere has a memoir out. It's called "This Is Me: A Reckoning." She told me that as she looks back at her career, she feels that she lost the chance to have what she calls a normal childhood.
PANETTIERE: It was like I was trying to fit into two different worlds - one was a very adult world, which was the industry, and one was the world of just being a normal kid - and struggled with both in different ways. But I desperately wanted to fit in. That's what I wanted more than anything.
PFEIFFER: To fit in no matter which world you were in, the adult world or the child world?
PANETTIERE: Yeah. I fit more easily into the adult world, oddly enough, but I desperately wanted to fit - I wanted to have friends that were my age. I wanted to go to school like a normal kid. I wanted to play sports. And I did get to do a lot of those things, but people didn't look at - my peers didn't look at me as one of them.
PFEIFFER: There's a story you tell in your memoir about being really good at crying on command on set.
PANETTIERE: Yes, my trigger tears.
PFEIFFER: Your trigger tears, exactly.
PANETTIERE: (Laughter).
PFEIFFER: I can see how, in certain situations in life, that'd be a pretty, you know, useful, impressive skill. Although in retrospect, you write that you didn't feel like that was such a great thing for you.
PANETTIERE: It was a skill set that was very beneficial to me as an actor in the industry. But as soon as they figured out that I could cry on cue, it was almost like it was written into every scene, every storyline. But the more I did it, it was - the things I had to - the mental place I had to go, like, when I was a child, it was very simple. You know, I just had to think about, you know, an animal that I loved dying. And then as I got older and older, I became numb-er (ph) and numb-er to that, and the thoughts and the places that I had to go in my head became darker and darker. And how could that not have an emotional impact over time on you?
PFEIFFER: To have to think of traumatic or tragic things...
PANETTIERE: Very traumatic, very dark.
PFEIFFER: ...To get those tears to flow.
PANETTIERE: Yeah. And then I would get praise afterwards, which made it very strange. It was like that emotional pain - I was, you know, patted on the back and applauded for going to those places. But there - I was in this very dark, emotional place. And as I got older - as I got - when I was a child, it was easy for me to jump in and out of the characters. But as I got older, it was harder and harder. And I had to take more of a running start, if that makes sense.
PFEIFFER: Yeah.
PANETTIERE: And it was harder for me to pull myself out of those dark moments.
PFEIFFER: Yeah, I bet. You do not shy away from very tough topics in your memoir - eventual drug and alcohol problems...
PANETTIERE: No.
PFEIFFER: ...Your treatment for that. In fact, you say that the fourth season of "Nashville" mirrored your own life. Would you share a little bit about what you mean by that?
PANETTIERE: Oh, I mean, it was everything. In the beginning, I thought, wow, this is just a coincidence. You know, whether it was the - in the beginning of playing Juliette, it was me struggling with a mother-daughter relationship, a very toxic mother-daughter relationship. I thought that was just a coincidence. And then it started being dating, you know, football players. And then it went into postpartum depression and alcoholism and drug addiction and really, really dark subject matter that I was struggling with in real life. And having to go to set every day and play that out as her, I stopped being able to tell where the character started and where, you know, I ended. Like, we were just mushed together.
PFEIFFER: I want to ask about your relationship with your former longtime partner and, at one point, your fiance, the daughter you had together and you eventually losing custody of your daughter. There's a very heavy line in your book where you write, no one should ever have to raise a child on FaceTime.
PANETTIERE: Right.
PFEIFFER: How much are the two of them, your daughter and your former partner, part of your life now?
PANETTIERE: I mean, I travel as much as I can. I spend as much time as I can with her. I have a great relationship with - co-parenting relationship with Wlad I'm incredibly grateful for. I have a relationship with my daughter. If I can't be there with her physically, then I talk to her all the time on FaceTime. And she's getting to that age where she's reaching out more and more to Mommy, which is beautiful. But I feel like I've gotten to - we developed a relationship that's unique and different than most parents get to have with their children. Hopefully, you know, a growing friendship, too.
PFEIFFER: Why did you want to be so open about all of that?
PANETTIERE: I was pretty - I mean, it was just - if I was going to write about my life and set the record straight, I needed to just - I needed to really go there. I needed to show people the full picture of my life. And if I left out certain parts, I didn't feel like people would be able to get the full image of who I am.
PFEIFFER: Because of your own experiences, you've said that you want your daughter to have the ability to live a private life. How is that going for her?
PANETTIERE: Oh, it's perfect. It's amazing. It's everything that I wanted for her. And it's incredible to watch her thrive. It's incredible to watch her, as a parent, have friends and not struggle socially. She - you know, we want to protect our children from going through the traumas that we went through, and to see her thrive in areas that I struggled in is the greatest gift.
PFEIFFER: You know, we always hear that one of the things about life is how do you overcome adversity. And I guess your book is a really big lesson in how you do that.
PANETTIERE: Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. I think so. I think so. It's made me stronger. It's opened some wounds, but I'm healing, and I'm OK with my scars.
PFEIFFER: I'm glad to hear it. That is Hayden Panettiere. She's an actor, and her memoir is called "This Is Me: A Reckoning." Hayden, thank you for talking about this.
PANETTIERE: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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