Hayden Panettiere was 8 years old and had a career to maintain. When her upper right front tooth fell out in the middle of filming in Chicago, there was no time to wait for the dentist.
Her mother, Lesley Vogel, had a spare dental prosthesis, but the adhesive recommended by the dentist was not at hand. So she improvised: she took the lost tooth, put a drop of superglue on it, and attached it to the prosthesis in front of her daughter’s eyes. “Give me the tooth you lost. And cross your fingers”, she told her, according to the actress in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning.
They waited ten seconds for it to dry, and Panettiere put it in her mouth, terrified that it would stay stuck forever.
It worked. She was left with a slight lisp, but she kept the role. Today, at 36, Panettiere has no relationship with her mother, and this episode is just one of those she reveals in her book about an entire childhood devoted to the camera.