Hayden Panettiere makes a number of shocking claims about her estranged mother, Lesley Vogel, in her new memoir, This Is Me : A Reckoning.
In the book, released Tuesday, Panettiere reflects on her journey into the limelight as a child actor. Now 36, she made her screen debut in a toy train commercial when she was just 11 months old and went on to star on soap operas Guiding Light and One Life to Live.
Panettiere wrote that her mom, also a soap opera star, took her responsibility as a stage mom seriously — and when the time came for her baby teeth to fall out, she was determined not to let her daughter miss out on commercial roles because of her changing smile.
The Heroes star wrote that when she lost her right front tooth at the age of eight, her mom took her to a dentist to set her up with a fake tooth.
“A nice dental assistant took a mold of my top teeth, and Dr. Bob explained to me and Mom that a flipper is a retainer with an acrylic ‘palate,’” Panettiere wrote. “However, because a flipper doesn’t straighten anything, there are no wires. Instead, stuck to the front of the palate is an artificial tooth that fits squarely where the missing tooth used to be. When I put the flipper in my mouth, no one would know I’d lost a tooth.”
Panettiere wrote that the dentist advised them to use Fixodent, a denture adhesive, to secure the flipper to the roof of her mouth.
However, Vogel got creative and decided to use superglue when Panettiere lost a tooth while on a shoot in Chicago. The actor recalls her mom telling her, “Give me the tooth you lost. And cross your fingers.”
“I dutifully handed Mom the tooth and watched her squeeze a dab of superglue onto it. Then she affixed the tooth to the flipper,” she wrote. The mom and daughter duo then waited 10 seconds until the glue dried.
She continued: “Partly in horror and partly out of respect for the MacGyver-like skills I had no idea she possessed, I stepped back to give Mom some room.”
“A few seconds later, Mom handed me the flipper, now containing two teeth, and I slipped it tentatively into my mouth,” she recalled. “A little voice in my head told me that if the superglue wasn’t dry, I was going to live with this flipper for all eternity. I closed my mouth and licked my top teeth. Then I opened my mouth and smiled.”
Panettiere wrote that the quick fix worked out, although it affected her speech, adding: “Lisp be damned, I got the job.”
The Independent was unable to identify a contact for Vogel.
Later in the book, the Nashville star said that she ended her professional relationship with her mother as a teenager due to ongoing rifts.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have a relationship right now,” Panettiere told Us Weekly earlier this month. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day. It’s hard for me to say, but I’ve chosen to be brutally honest.”
This Is Me: A Reckoning is available in bookstores.
