At the same time, Panettiere was being lauded for playing troubled country singer Juliette Barnes in TV drama Nashville, which earned her two Golden Globe nominations during its six-year run.
One critic, in Metro, wrote, external: “A character who could be the biggest stereotype going has, thanks to Panettiere’s award-worthy performance, become the heart of Nashville, a believably flawed, not always easy to like character who is clearly a product of her traumatic childhood.”
The distinction between the actress and her character became blurred, however.
“When I first started doing Nashville I thought, well, it’s just a coincidence that our our lives are have so many similarities,” she said.
“And then as the years went on, the episodes went on, and everything kept started matching up – from who Juliette Barnes was dating, to being an alcoholic, to postpartum depression, to losing her child, basically abandoning her child – then it was like, OK, this you guys are just mirroring my life.”
As well as being uncanny, for Panettiere it was traumatic to act out things so similar to her real life. “I dove headfirst into my own hell,” she wrote.
“I was suffering from debilitating anxiety and addiction I couldn’t shake, and I had to live through it twice. First at home, as Hayden, and then in front of millions at home, as Juliette.”
