Hayden
Panettiere is
"Beth Cooper"
by Lynn Barker
 High
schooler Beth Cooper won't save the world but she is a cheerleader just
like Hayden Panettiere's "Heroes" character. Later this summer
you can catch Hayden in the fun, heartfelt comedy I Love You Beth
Cooper based upon a whimsical book by Larry Doyle. Movie storyline
goes: the class nerd Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust) confesses all in his
graduation speech. At the top of his list is his love and desire for class
hottie Beth Cooper. For her own reasons, she shows up at his door promising
to show him the time of his life!
Last year
we trekked up to rainy Vancouver to visit the set of this Chris Columbus-directed
comedy. The beautiful North Shore Studios are surrounded by pines but
we found Hayden carrying an umbrella, wearing a prom dress and "surrounded"
by a warm and cozy down coat and Ugg boots against the cold rain. After
watching a couple of scenes shoot on the soundstage set of the Cooverman
house, we were tucked into a production office, slugging down hot chocolate
and ready to chat about Hayden's very personal high school and middle
school experiences (she swears she wasn't popular and even felt "tortured"!).
We also talk cellulite, Hayden's animal activism and having fun in Vancouver
(the cast playing "Rock Band" is involved)...
AGW: That's
a really pretty dress. So why are you dressed the way you are today? Can
you explain the context?
Hayden: (laughs)
I want to burn this dress now. I used to like it. Yeah, when you’ve
been wearing the same outfit for 3 months….
AGW: Oh right.
Of course. The action all takes place over one night.
Hayden: Yeah.
My friends actually made fun of me. They were like… 'in the beginning
you were like', 'look at my dress. Isn’t it so pretty?' And now
I’m like 'I want to burn it. I hate it'. But this is my graduation
dress, so this is for the party. For the partee, which we spend the entire
night attempting to get to and all hell breaks loose.
AGW: How’s
the experience been for you playing comedy? Does your character have a
lot of funny lines or are you more of a straight man?
Hayden: I’m
kind of the straight man in with the comedians, but, at the same time,
there’s a lot of funny stuff that goes on. I think it’s kind
of in-between. It’s been really great. I think comedy is one of
the hardest, if not the hardest, form of acting and it always mind-boggles
me to see the Academy Awards and the fact that comedies are never nominated
or actors. I’d like to say (to a dramatic actor) 'yeah, you can
cry and you can play mental, but I’d like to see you do comedy'.
AGW: Okay,
cheerleaders, compare and contrast.
Hayden: (laughs)
You know what? I just find myself playing them for some reason and sometimes
they’re not even characters that are like 'cheerleaderesque'. They’re
just cheerleaders.
AGW: What
was it about this story that made you say 'I want to put on that costume
again'?
Hayden: Well,
they got me in the outfit and they took a still picture and that’s
pretty much the amount I’m in the cheerleading outfit. It’s
in one picture. But I really wanted to do a comedy especially coming from
a show like 'Heroes'. It’s just nice to spread your wings a little
bit and in this business. You get categorized quite a bit and you are
your last film all the time, so if you stick to just comedies or just
dramas, it's very hard for people to see you in any other light. So coming
from a drama in 'Heroes', it was way up on my priority list to do a comedy.
And this one has heart, which it’s nice.
AGW: So can
you describe what the film is like? What sort of movie does it remind
you of?
Hayden: The
concept of the story is kind of like Superbad just because it
takes place all in one night. And it’s kind of like Mean Girls
because I look at Mean Girls and I see something that people
kind of assumed would be a teen flick and was so much more than that.
And it was such a great film. Basically the story is Denis Cooverman is
the valedictorian of the school and makes his speech at graduation and
he says 'let us say the things that we never had the chance to say' and
he says, 'I love you, Beth Cooper'. And this is a girl that’s the
queen bee of the school and he thinks of her basically like a picture.
She’s perfect. She’s wonderful and beautiful and confident
and [hot] and he sat behind her in almost every class and she has no idea
who he is.
AGW: This
is so real. I think everybody either was like that or knows someone like
that.
 Hayden:
Yeah. Then throughout the entire film, even though it’s hilarious,
it really has heart because these five students get stuck together through
a series of events and they find out that even though they came from completely
different social backgrounds in high school that they really have a lot
in common. They really, really enjoy each other and they learn a lot from
each other and he learns that this girl is not perfect. She actually thinks
that she’s nothing. She thinks that she’s done so well in
high school because she knew how to control people but that was the high
point in her life because she’s not good at anything. She’s
not smart. She’s not really good at cheerleading. She’s not
an athlete or has any ambition in life.
AGW: So, could
she fall for sweet, nerdy Denis then?
Hayden: Well,
she winds up looking at him and going, 'you’re incredible. You have
a life and you’re going to go off and you’re going to cure
cancer and you’re going to be a doctor and you’re smart and
you have so much more than me. Even though high school wasn’t good
for you, it was wonderful for me, but your life is going to be great for
you'. So it really is a sweet story as much as it’s a comedy.
AGW: Cool.
Were you able to have a regular high school experience yourself?
Hayden: I
made a lot of sacrifices which is great for me now. I worked really hard
but, for being gone as much as I was, I actually had a relatively normal
high school life. I home schooled because, my Freshman year I went over
to South Africa and did a film there [Stripes] and lived there
for about six months so I finished my Freshman year there. You never know
if and when you’re going to work again so I just decided to continue
to do high school in a home schooling program but I did it at home where
I was raised and with all of my friends so I was still going to high school.
I was even in the yearbook. I went to homecoming. I went to prom. I participated
in school sports. I just didn’t go to class with them. Really, as
much as it was abnormal, it was normal.
AGW: Where
was this?
Hayden: It
was in New York, a small town, a great place to grow up because it’s
so boring. You could not get yourself in trouble. You resort to house
parties. We had this fort in the woods near a cliff and it was beautiful,
amazing. You would never get that anywhere else. It’s one of those
places where, while you’re there you’re going ‘can’t
wait to get out of here’ but as soon as you’re gone you’re
like ‘ah, I miss it’. Such fond memories of it.
AGW: Can you
relate to cliques in school though?
Hayden: I
was never the popular girl. I actually thought the worst, worst, worst
was middle school, because in high school you could walk away for lunch,
do this, do that. You were much more open. You had a much broader group
of friends and in middle school it was all about where you sat in the
lunchroom. And it was one of the most traumatizing experiences for me.
I was absolutely tortured.
AGW: Wow,
can you tell us any particular incident that teens can relate to?
Hayden: I
remember going to sit with the popular kids for the first time because
one girl like invited me over. I was like, 'oh my gosh' and went to sit
and one of the guys pulled the chair out from underneath me before I sat
down and everyone started laughing. So, I was never the popular girl.
Never, never, never.
AGW: That's
so awful. I wonder what those girls get out of doing that?
Hayden: It’s
like Mean Girls. You knew that she had to put effort into being
[nasty] so that nobody else crosses her line and thinks that they can
take over her spot. It’s like the more you ignored people, the more
they wanted to be friends with you and it was all so fake and phony. And
everyone I see like that you just go, 'they’ve got to have some
sort of problem. They’ve got to be damaged in some way. They have
a big problem with themselves'.
AGW: Is that
how Beth, your character is?
Hayden: What
you wind up finding out about her is that she’s actually a genuinely
a nice person but this is all she has and she needs to shine. This is
her moment to shine in high school because she feels the rest of her life
is going to be completely ordinary. You know, she even makes a comment
about the fact that she’s going to get fat and 'you should see my
mom'. It’s very funny but it’s very endearing and sweet and
it’s very human.
AGW: There
is so much pressure on young female stars like yourself to look or be
"perfect". How do you handle that?
Hayden: I
can’t tell you how many times I’ve thanked God and my parents
for raising me in a place that was so humbling and so outside any of that
stuff. I mean I live criticism every day. I’d go walk my dogs and
I used to walk them in my PJ’s and now I have to make sure I look
half decent or else I’ll get trashed. Or like having cellulite on
the back of your legs. 'I’m sorry, I’m a woman. I don’t
know what you want me to tell you' [we laugh]. 'I’m sorry. It’s
not going to go away. I can’t do anything about it. I apologize
if I offended you'.
AGW: Cellulite,
the equal opportunity curse! But, you seem to be surviving the pressure...
Hayden: I
think I came into it when Paris and Lindsay and all these girls were at
their height of what they were doing and I would say it’s guilty
by association. If you are a young female in Hollywood, you are guilty
of everything that people say. People feel that they have a right to judge
you and they haven’t even had a conversation with you and it’s
scary. I have a body that girls can look at and go, 'oh she’s not
anorexically skinny. She looks healthy and she’s got cellulite,
yeah!'
AGW: (by now
we're thinking about our own cellulite. Thank God we're wearing long pants).
Does this "role model" label drive you nuts then?
 Hayden:
I think the only problem with attempting to be a role model is the fact
that you just want to go, 'okay, I’ll be a role model for you. I’d
love to, but don’t expect me to be perfect because I’m not
and I do screw up and I do make mistakes and I can’t always think
of everyone else and what they’re going to say'. Because at the
end of the day the only person you can make happy is yourself. No matter
whether it’s wrong or right or looks good or looks bad, somebody
will hate it. Somebody will.
AGW: This
cast is very young and dynamic (Lauren Storm, Lauren London, Jack Carpenter,
Paul Rust). Working up here in Vancouver, have you had a chance to bond
with anybody and hang out off-set and do anything fun?
Hayden: We
spend so much time together. It’s really interesting because everyone
has a very different personality. I’ve learned that it’s very
interesting to be around people who look at things very differently than
you or have different opinions than you and you learn a lot from people
like that. So it’s great.
AGW: I hear
a lot of "Rock Band" rivalry is going on off-set...right?
Hayden: We
do have 'Rock Band'. Yes, we do. Everyone’s in a hotel and I decided,
stupidly, to stay in this other apartment because it was a great apartment.
But every time I walk up and down the hotel hallways, I always walk past
Jack’s room and I can hear him down the hall playing 'Rock Band'
so I go purposely bang on the door in the middle of a song, but yeah,
Chris even has 'Rock Band'. We tried to convince him to try to tell him
he should bring it to set and set it up. I do nothing but sing on it.
Don’t even ask me to like do any coordination like ugh, I’ve
tried 'Guitar Hero'. I’ll stick to the singing.
AGW: Had you
read the 'Beth Cooper' book or did you go read the book?
Hayden: Yeah,
we all got sent the book in the beginning and it was actually an interesting
story coming across this because I was pitching another film called Naomi
& Eli’s No Kiss List, which is also a book. It’s
by the same author as Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist.
They said 'well, we’ll do this film if you do “Beth Cooper”'
and I read it and it’s great. It’s actually come a long way.
Chris decided to direct it and that was really exciting.
AGW: You’ve
been very passionate about whales and wildlife and this is Vancouver.
So, have you been able to enjoy any like that kind of stuff up here?
Hayden: Actually
the only thing I’ve done because we’ve worked so often is
I’ve spent quite a lot of time at the Vancouver Aquarium, where
all of their dolphins have been rescued. A lot of them are actually rescued
from out of fishing nets in like Japan. So that was home for me and I
was there with Jack Coleman who plays my dad on “Heroes”.
He and his family were in town and they were like, 'We’re at the
aquarium', so I went and met him there and somebody came up to me and
was like, 'you want a back tour? We know what you do and stuff.'
AGW: How cool
was that? Did you see animals up close?
Hayden: Yeah.
With the dolphins, they actually let me go down and play with them and
this one sea lion, she’s huge. She’s probably 1,000 pounds
and she got on my lap with both of her front paws and she wrapped her
head around mine, around my neck so her head was like this [indicates
wrapped around her] and her body was…well, she was huge! But it
was the most incredible experience. I’ve spent quite a lot of time
there. I did take a trip a while ago to Alaska to see the Orcas and that
was real exciting.
Pictures courtesy
of and copyright 20th Century Fox, 2009
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