18 On the Town and Across the Globe
EIGHTEEN
On the Town and Across the Globe
I was young and new to Hollywood, and there were times I wanted to let my hair down.
The place everyone said I could do that was a brand-new Hollywood club called Les Deux.
Les Deux was the hot spot of the moment for famous twentysomethings, located behind unmarked doors on a nondescript street called North Las Palmas Avenue.
While it was full of celebrities and the paparazzi swarmed the entrance, security fended them off by the time you reached the inside.
My favorite part of Les Deux was its gorgeous outdoor courtyard, which Kim Kardashian used for her twenty-seventh birthday party and where so many episodes of The Hills were filmed that the club pretty much became a side character.
I was seventeen, so while I’d spent some time sneaking beers with the DASH girls, I wasn’t a big drinker.
Sometimes I asked Stephen to order me a cocktail at Les Deux, but I’d put it down to talk to someone and forget all about it.
I was also afraid of someone slipping a pill into my drink, so if I abandoned one, it was for the best. Roofie-ing happened all the time—even in the nicest bars and clubs—and I didn’t want to take a chance.
I’d also just become the face of Neutrogena, a brand with a squeaky-clean product identity.
Not only did I have a strict morality clause in my contract, but I was well aware of what I was supposed to represent as a Neutrogena cover girl.
The brand was pure, clean, and natural, and I was meant to showcase that image as an innocent, all-American sweetheart who didn’t touch cigarettes, booze, and happy pills.
My relationship with Neutrogena helped dictate every outfit I wore, every hair and makeup choice, and how I acted when I was out on the town.
I never let the paparazzi see me holding a drink—underage Neutrogena girls didn’t do that—and while I didn’t force myself to dress modestly, I never showed too much skin.
I started walking through my life playing the role of Hayden Panettiere, Neutrogena Girl, and, at times, that was a high standard impossible to uphold.
Once again, I couldn’t stand to let anyone down.
I became a people pleaser at the expense of the real me.
Despite all this, a big part of me was relieved that I didn’t feel the need to stay at Les Deux or any other club all night.
My priority was acting, not playing a celebrity, and the relentless pressure from the press had shown me the difference between the two.
But another part of me knew the truth: none of the other bold-faced names my age were begging me to stay.
You’d think these were the people I’d have the most in common with, but at times it felt like the opposite.
Paris Hilton was like a big sister to me, and I have gone to many of the amazing parties she’s thrown over the years.
You would think her parties were Hollywood events because of the amount of celebrities there.
As I got older, I began to feel more accepted into the “popular” club, but as a teenager I found myself hiding in the corner watching these people work their magic.
The confidence most famous people radiated was palpable.
Watching how people like Lindsay Lohan commanded a room was mesmerizing.
I was around thirteen when I first met Lindsay, and she’d always been warm and friendly to me, but I thought of her as one of the consummate cool girls.
She always seemed completely in her element, talking to anyone and everyone.
I remember watching her in awe from across the room, and I was convinced she was born to be in situations like this.
I was not, and I feared rejection. So, I went to the parties and tried my best to say the right things, but never felt like I made friendships like I had with the DASH girls.
I don’t write any of this to get sympathy.
My life was blessed then, and it is now.
And I suppose I was lucky, not becoming fully enmeshed with the group journalists had started calling the “Messy Generation.” I could have gotten in huge trouble if I’d drank more, gotten into fights, or raced away from Les Deux in my car and crashed it into a ditch on Sunset Boulevard, where photographers would have swarmed me like flies.
The paparazzi and magazine editors wanted to build me up and make me popular so they could sell magazines—but then they wanted to crush me.
When I was seventeen, I only escaped that because I wasn’t a bad girl.
Little did I know that I’d have the rest of my life to fall apart in the public eye.
I was still preoccupied with disappointing my team and parents, too.
While the other celebrities faced everything from ridicule to jail time for their escapades, I still felt a duty to be home at a reasonable hour, when Mom was there to greet me.
Sure, it hurt not to have friends in the cool crowd, but it was for the best. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I missed out on a lot of drama and grief because I still thought of myself as the child I was.
And in the mornings, after a night out, I woke up feeling good. With the paparazzi waiting to pounce, I drove north through the Hollywood Hills, to the Heroes set for a long day of work. It was there—especially after the first season—that I was about to discover a true, lasting set of friends.
Just before the second season of Heroes aired—and right as the show was being rolled out into a few international markets—the producers decided to send the cast on a worldwide promotional tour.
They split us into three groups: one that would hit Europe, one that would visit select cities in North America, and one that would travel to Asia.
My group—the European leg of the tour—included Jack Coleman, who played my adoptive father, Noah Bennet; Milo Ventimiglia, who starred as Peter Petrelli, a hospice nurse whose superpower was mimicking other people’s powers; and Adrian Pasdar, who played Peter’s older brother, Nathan.
I was far and away the youngest one in the bunch, but I didn’t feel left out one bit.
With a character like Claire to sink my teeth into and a cast and crew that had been more than supportive so far, I was confident.
Work wasn’t Les Deux, middle school, or some other social experiment.
It was where I could really let my light shine.
I had just turned eighteen, and that meant for the first time in my career, Mom and Dad weren’t legally required to travel with me.
I would be on the road with colleagues I loved, promoting a show that had launched my career into the stratosphere.
I put a lot of stock into star signs, and I’m a Leo, which means I crave excitement and adventure.
This tour was the adventure of a lifetime, and I was free to do whatever my heart desired—so long as it didn’t damage the show.
I still played it safe every chance I got, so I knew that wouldn’t be an issue.
I expected to have the time of my life. What I didn’t expect was the onslaught of fans who greeted us at each of our two-day stops.
Jack, Milo, Adrian, and I hit London, Munich, and Paris, and—even though the show had only aired a handful of times in each territory—there was a frenzy everywhere we went.
I remember getting off the London Eye, unable to move because I was swarmed by Heroes fans demanding autographs.
The screams from the crowds in Munich were deafening.
We had bodyguards and escorts and paparazzi chasing us on motorcycles, which are far scarier than cars because bikes can zip in and out of traffic.
I’d been so focused on the paparazzi in LA that it hadn’t occurred to me that Heroes had turned us into international stars overnight, but those ginormous crowds weren’t faking all the noise they made.
Heroes was a big, fat deal all over the globe, and there was no getting around it.
I’d had a little crush on Milo since the show started, but we were friends and nothing more.
Milo was thirty and I had just turned eighteen.
However something was in the air in Europe.
Maybe it was the sights or the food or the fact that everyone fell all over us, but I felt dizzy with joy, and it seemed so did Milo.
Over the course of the world tour, our friendship turned to flirtation, and, just like that, we became a thing.