The invincible cheerleader from “Heroes” isn’t so sweet in real life, she admits.
“People look at me as sweet,” Hayden Panettiere said yesterday. But “I would never describe myself like that.
“I think I’ve always been categorized, and sometimes typecast, because I’m blonde, and people look at me as either the popular cheerleader type or just the blonde, and you don’t play villains when you’re blonde, unless you’re Sharon Stone.”
Panettiere, 17, who plays Claire Bennett, a teen with the power to instantly heal after any injury, says she would give anything to play a villain for once.
“I wish I could turn bad,” she says of her character, who matured last season from a selfish teenager into a noble do-gooder.
“I’d turn bad in a second; I’d be the villain. I could be bad. It would be a blast,” she says.
Panettiere says she is grateful for all the attention fans give the show, even the ones who have become obsessed with it. She admits they might want to “get a life.”
“It’s crossed my mind,” she says. “But it’s very cool that they like it, because it’s a pat on our backs. Aside from awards shows, we’re always behind the camera . . . so it doesn’t always click that 15 million people are watching. It’s cool to hear from them.”
The popularity of the show has turned Panettiere into a star - which she loves aside from the hordes of paparazzi who camp outside her Los Angeles home. “I wish I had the power to be invisible,” she says.
Without naming names, Panettiere alludes to Lindsay Lohan, an actress just a few years older, whose career is in flames following DUI busts.
“What I’m working towards is to be a respected actress, and in order [to achieve that] there are certain things you just can’t do. I think unfortunately in this business when people start getting all these perks and sort of head down the wrong road, they can lose track of what’s important and they forget about their craft and their love of it and that causes people to slack off and lose focus.”
Panettiere says that the second season of the NBC hit picks up four months after last season’s finale. In the show, she and a group of other people with super powers managed to save New York City from a serial killer who was bent on blowing up Manhattan.
“I think Claire really grew up (in the first season),” she says. “I definitely was getting sick of crying. I was getting tired of seeing her cry - teenagers are selfish, and I’ll vouch for that. Over time she realized that by dismissing her power she was risking people’s lives.”
Source: nypost.com
