Hayden Panettiere found shooting 'Nashville' "very traumatising" because of the parallels with her own life.
Hayden Panettiere struggled with the similarities between her own life and Nashville
The 34-year-old actress played country singer Juliette Barnes in the drama series, which ran from 2012 to 2018, and she admitted it was often difficult to film because it felt "very obvious" that the show's writers were looking to her own turbulent life - including her struggles with addiction and her daughter Kaya, now nine, moving to Ukraine to live with her dad Wladimir Klitschko - for inspiration.
She told The Messenger: "[There were times when filming 'Nasvhille' was] also very traumatising because I felt like I was acting out my own life.
"Straight from the beginning, it was like, I'm dating a football player, [and then] Juliette dates a football player. And then they turned her into an alcoholic. Then they turned to her leaving her daughter and going to this crazy [place] in Europe, and it was very obvious …
"They weren't doing their homework. They weren't creating new storylines. They were just looking at my life and going, 'Oh, let's just take what she's going through and put our little spin on it.' And then, ta-da! It's done and done."
Hayden admitted the 12-20 hour days on set took a huge toll on her wellbeing.
She said: "I didn't have time to take care of myself [and] to think about and go through the pain I was experiencing physically [and] emotionally.
"I just wanted to drum it out and watch mindless television and great shows. Anything to keep my mind off of that because I knew that next day I was going to be back at it again. I was like, tear central. I don't even think on a soap opera that I cried as much [as I did] on 'Nashville'."
And the former 'Heroes' star questions how her life would have been if she hadn't taken the lead role in 'Nashville'.
Asked if she regrets continuing to act amid her personal problems, she said: "I look back at it with curiosity more than anything. If I hadn't had done that — if I hadn't accepted 'Nashville' and had all that time to be involved with other projects — then where would I be now?
"Because it took six years of my career when I was at my physical prime, my mental, my everything, that I just wonder what it would have been like in the hiatuses, [if I] did one project or film, or was encouraged to do that. Where would I be today?"
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