Hayden Panettiere was in constant “fear” while living in Nashville after a stalker fixated on her before being sentenced to prison years later.
“This is a very terrifying individual who wreaked havoc on my life for a long, long time,” Panettiere, 36, exclusively recalls in Us Weekly’s latest cover story, on newsstands now, while promoting her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. “It was a very scary situation.”
She remembers the man getting her phone number and the number of her closest confidants and he would call and text “all day, every day [with] threats on my life.”
“I had to cancel multiple speaking events, because he was traveling, and, like, waiting for me there, to do lord knows what,” Panettiere tells Us of the scary ordeal. “So I had to cancel everything, and I had to stay inside and live in fear.”
The actress reveals that the convicted stalker was put in jail by the FBI and sentenced to 30 months in prison in July 2025, but he “recently got out,” which has stirred up several emotions.
“I’ve been trying to process, you know, that fact, and it’s terrifying,” Panettiere confesses. “It’s been very scary, the whole thing was terrifying. Still is terrifying.”
‘Nashville’ costars Charles Esten and Hayden Panettiere. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
She notes that the case “affected everyone” in her orbit. (Panettiere was living in Tennessee and working on ABC’s Nashville, which ran from 2012 to 2018, when the stalking began.)
“It affected not just me, but it affected everyone around me. Everyone was in danger,” Panettiere tells Us. “A lot of people were in danger that were close to me.”
The Heroes alum says that when she was first faced with her stalker, she was worried he’d be “capable of finding me where I went.”
Hayden Panettiere channeled her own experiences — as a both mother and as a former sleepwalker — when diving into the complex emotions of her latest character. In her new psychological thriller, Sleepwalker, Panettiere, 36, explores the question of how much a mother can endure as mourning mom Sarah, whose grief after losing her daughter […]
That constant fear had a “huge impact” on Panettiere and the lives of those she loved, which she says “was almost worse.”
Panettiere admits it was “worse for me, fearing for them,” explaining to Us that once she saw someone threatening to harm her loved ones, she became a “fierce lioness.”
“Thank God for the FBI. Thank God they caught him,” she adds. Panettiere says now that he’s out it’s “daunting” to think about if he’ll return, but “that’s the reality of the situation.”
Hayden Panettiere is pulling back the curtain on her brief romance with Laguna Beach’s Stephen Colletti nearly 20 years after they called it quits. “I’m so grateful that he was part of my life, especially when he was,” Panettiere, 36, exclusively reveals in her Us Weekly cover story on newsstands now. “Because when I was […]
Panettiere confessed, “It’s terrifying what people are capable of” after all she’s experienced.
Panettiere opens up about her fears as well as the darker times in her life in her upcoming memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, which hits shelves on Tuesday, May 19.
The Remember the Titans star also details her romantic past and pulls back the curtain on her relationships with Stephen Colletti, Milo Ventimiglia and more — which you can get a tease of in Us Weekly’s latest issue, on newsstands now.
