Hayden Panettiere’s mom has denied she was ever “abusive” or pressured her daughter to succeed.
The late Heroes star – who died last weekend aged just 36, was estranged from Lesley Vogel, which she had previously claimed stemmed from the way the boundaries between her as a parent and manager increasingly crossed, but her mother has now insisted she never forced her daughter to do anything she didn’t want to do, though she admitted she was a demanding parent and acting coach.
She told Daily Mail online: “I was strong, definitely, but I was not abusive by any stretch of the imagination.:
Lesley continued, “I think that Hayden put a pressure on herself. I know that she has mentioned, you know, 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.”
“Try making a two-to five-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,” she added.
Hayden began modelling when she was just a baby, and made more than 50 commercials as a child, as well as landing her first acting role in One Life to Live when she was just four years old.
But Lesley insisted she “never” expected her to be a professional actress.
She said, “She started with Wilhelmina at eight months old because she’s a beautiful baby. I mean, really beautiful baby.”
“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,” Lesley mentioned of her late daughter, Hayden Panettiere’s career path.
