Hayden Panettiere’s Mother Denies Child Star Pressure and Abuse Allegations
Lesley Vogel, the mother of the late actress Hayden Panettiere, denied accusations that she pressured or abused her daughter into a full-time child acting career. In an interview published on Saturday, August 22, by The Daily Mail, the 70-year-old responded to public scrutiny following the actress’s August 16 death in South Carolina at age 36.
Vogel signed Panettiere with the Wilhelmina modeling agency when the future Heroes star was eight months old. According to Vogel, the decision stemmed from aesthetic observation rather than long-term career ambition. “She started with Wilhelmina at eight months old because she’s a beautiful baby. I mean, really beautiful baby,” Vogel told The Daily Mail. “My thought then was, let her do some stuff, we’ll put it in her college fund, and she’ll go to college and she’ll have this. I never expected her to be a professional actor, never.”
Panettiere shot her first commercial three months after signing with the agency. By age five, she secured her first recurring television role as Sarah Roberts on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live, a part she played from 1994 to 1997 while Vogel acted as her initial talent manager.
Conflicting Accounts of Childhood Pressure
The debate surrounding early career pressure intensified following a May interview Panettiere gave to The Hollywood Reporter. The late actress stated that she felt groomed for work throughout her youth. “I was like a little soldier and I always have been. ‘No’ was never an option,” Panettiere alleged in the interview. “It was just, ‘Here are your scenes, here’s your dialogue, memorize it, hit the marks, do what your director tells you to do.’ I took my marching orders.”
Vogel rejected those characterizations, arguing that any pressure felt by the actress was self-generated. “I think that Hayden put a pressure on herself,” Vogel stated to The Daily Mail. “I know that she has mentioned, you know, [that she] ‘always had to please Mom,’ or make sure it was, you know, I succeeded or whatever. I didn’t put that on her. I think she put that on herself.” Vogel also questioned the viability of forcing a toddler into acting against their will, noting, “Try making a 2- to 5-year-old child do something they don’t want to do. Are you going to be successful? No, you’re not. Probably 99 percent of the time.”
Public Backlash and Subsequent Fallout
Vogel initially addressed her daughter’s death in an August 18 statement, telling the public that young people in the entertainment industry frequently face challenges finding the right path.
Vogel expressed sharp criticism of those reactions in her subsequent interview. “I was very, very hurt and deeply disappointed in the lack of professionalism, the lack of compassion in slamming someone who’s lost two children, without even a modicum of consideration,” Vogel told The Daily Mail. “No one reached out to me before. It’s shameful. It’s unconscionable to me.” Vogel previously lost her son, Jansen Panettiere, in February 2023 due to an undiagnosed heart condition.
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