Hayden Panettiere recalls being put in bed with an undressed famous man

Hayden Panettiere has recalled a disturbing encounter with a "very famous" man when she was a teenager.

During an interview for the On Purpose podcast with Jay Shetty this week, host Jay repeated a story from the actress's new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she detailed how she was taken to a room aboard a boat when she was 18 and told to "perform sexual acts" with an unnamed celebrity.

"The fact that I was 18, even though I'd lived such a huge life and I thought I was oh so mature at 18... scientifically, your frontal lobes don't develop until we're what, 25, 26?" she reflected. "So even though I felt like I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn't capable of being fully aware of what was going on around me."

Hayden described how her perspective "completely shifted" once she realised she was "in danger" and "quite literally out to sea".

The Nashville star also emphasised that she boarded the boat with a friend and found their behaviour to be deeply "shocking".

"There was (sic) no hints of anything like that happening," the 36-year-old recounted. "So it took me by surprise... It was led by somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector and somebody who had my back."

Elsewhere in the conversation, Hayden recalled how she was taken to a small room and "presented as a surprise" for an "undressed" man.

"She physically put me in the bed next to this undressed man who was very famous," she remembered, emphasising how the man appeared to behave "like this was just an average day for him".

Yet, Hayden "bolted" from the room and hid.

"That lion in me, that fire in me... my hair stood on end and I became ferocious. I was like, 'This is not happening,'" the Heroes actress added. "There was no jumping off and swimming away. And there was nobody who was going to be empathetic to my situation. I realised that this was nothing new to them."

This Is Me: A Reckoning is available to purchase from 19 May.