Op-Ed: Hollywood Did a Number on Hayden Panettiere

Hayden Panettiere grew up in Hollywood, but for her, it was no safe space. In a column following the 36-year-old actor's death, Marlow Stern of Variety revisits Panettiere's recent memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, to lay out how the industry exposed her to pills, predators, and pressure from the time she was a child working nonstop. She wrote that "happy pills" were given to her at 15 to get her through red carpets, a move she said helped pave the way for years of addiction, alcohol abuse, and depression.

Stern spotlights Panettiere's accounts of being kissed by a powerful NBC executive, tricked into viewing an actor-director's exposed genitals at a party, and steered into a yacht bedroom with a naked musician—all as a young woman who'd been taught to trust the adults managing her career. Her eventual stint in rehab, and the warning from a doctor that drinking could kill her within five years, frames Stern's central charge: regardless of what caused her death, Hollywood failed to protect her. For the full piece and Panettiere's own words, read the column at Variety.