Hayden Panettiere spoke in an interview about one of the most difficult periods of her life and revealed a detail that is especially painful today: she deleted virtually all the photographs she had from that time, but decided to keep just one.
The actress said that, after achieving sobriety and leaving behind the years when she abused substances, she did not want to have reminders of what her life was like at that time.
However, there was one photograph she decided to keep on her phone.
“To remind myself what I looked like”, Panettiere explained.
The reason behind that decision was even deeper. The actress said that what frightened her most was remembering that, while she was going through that period, she thought she looked good.
“That’s what scares me the most”, she explained while talking about that image.
Panettiere had publicly spoken about her problems with alcohol and other substances, as well as the difficulties she went through during those years. In a later interview, she said that she had been sober for two years and that she did not like remembering that part of her life.
That is why she deleted the photographs she had from that period, leaving only that image as a kind of reminder of how far she had gone.
For her, the photograph was not a pleasant memory or something she wanted to keep out of nostalgia.
It was the opposite: a way not to forget what she looked like when she was still unable to recognize that she needed help.
And now, after her death at 36, her words take on an even more difficult meaning to hear.