Hayden Panettiere on Darkest Times & Asking for Help: 'I Found Myself Again' (Exclusive)

Hayden Panettiere has seen it all in her career, from the meteoric highs of Hollywood fame to the devastating lows of life as a tabloid target. 

She opened up to “Extra’s” Billy Bush about her struggles with alcohol and addiction, which were exacerbated by crippling postpartum depression. 

“I wanted to hide away,” Hayden shared. “I didn't want to be around my child all the time. Like, I loved her, but that maternal instinct didn't kick in the way that I would have expected. And I just became depressed.”

She recalled, "Fortunately, I had one friend that was willing to tell me she did not fall in love with her child immediately... she shared it with me that she fell in love with her child slowly as she became something else, which makes perfect sense because you basically give birth to a drooling, pooping... I think my first comment was she, I think she looks like my grandfather."

Acting out a parallel life to her own on “Nashville” only made matters worse. The star recalled, “Having to act it out… I was crying on set all the time. To have to go there mentally and do take after take, it gets so dark and mentally exhausting.”

She continued, "And if you're doing something and working on a topic that is so close to what you're going through right now, when you get home and have the time to where you should be focusing on your yourself and your own problems, you're like, I've done it all day."

Hayden added, "It's a major network production, so it's a big deal. You've got a lot on your shoulders, and it was 10 months out of the year. I mean, we did so many episodes, there was not a lot of time off. And it was exhausting. And it was, it was sad, it was exhausting, and I was trying to heal myself, and just praying that it was something that, over time, would, I don't know, fix itself. I just didn't have time to to worry about me."

Speaking about her alcohol use, she said, “Living in Nashville, in general it is what they do, they are drinkers.” Looking back, she recalled, "It almost became like an obsessive-compulsive thing. And there was a lot of hiding in it."

She explained, "I'm living my life around, I'm scheduling it around my cocktail, the first cocktail that I have, and I can't sleep unless I've had a drink. And when you're thinking about it all day long, that's when I knew it was a problem."

Hayden also confessed, "It became something where I physically was feeling the effects of it, and I was chasing away the shakes and things like that, and it took me having a sipper of alcohol or sipping on alcohol in order to keep myself normal."

As for how she pulled herself out of the situation, Panettiere said, “I asked for help. I finally said, ‘You know what, this is getting out of control. I don’t see my life like this.’ Slipped a few times, finally stuck with it for eight months, I got over the hump… I found myself again.”

Hayden took time off and reconnected with her daughter Kaya, now 9, who lives in Europe with Panettiere’s ex Wladimir Klitschko.

“I took four years off and I am proud to say and relieved to say that I feel great. Better than I have in years,” she said.

Now, she’s working on a memoir, which she calls “cathartic," and she's realizing she has a whole lot to share!

Hayden explained, "I grew up in this industry, and there's so many things that have happened that I started off worried — knowing that I had experienced a lot of things in life — but worried it wasn't enough at 35 to fill a book. But now around chapter four, I'm realizing I'm gonna have to do this again, another one."

She added, "I've been through things that have been topics that that people have been afraid to talk about, and if they haven't spoken about it, they feel alone, and and they need to know that they're not alone. And the stigma, you know, doesn't have to surround the topic anymore. And, yeah, I'd like to share it. There's a reason. I feel like, you know, things happen for a reason and I have gone through things, and it was the reason why I went through them. I'm gonna make it into something positive, which is to share it with people and hopefully help people out there."

The actress is also starring in the new thriller “Amber Alert,” out September 27.

The movie is about a ride share driver and passenger chasing another car that was reported in an Amber Alert.

Hayden shared, “Being a mother and going through this experience filming it, I will never look at an Amber Alert the same way again.”

She continued, "I mean, I kept thinking, you know, if this ever happened to my child, I would hope that there was somebody like the character that I play... she will not stop until she is 100% sure that that is not the right car, the little girl's not in there... It doesn't matter if she has to get out of of the the Uber and do it in high heels and run straight into danger knowing that she could lose her life, get hurt, she is on her own or not, and doesn't care."