Hayden Panettiere says she got a breast reduction because her body still didn't feel like it 'belonged' to her after she got sober

• Hayden Panettiere said she got a breast reduction in November 2022.
• She said her body didn't feel like it "belonged" to her after she got sober in 2021.

Hayden Panettiere revealed in a recent interview with Women's Health that she got a breast reduction after becoming sober from alcohol and drug addiction so that her body felt like it "belonged" to her again.

"My body still didn't feel like it belonged to me," she told reporter Vera Papisova of her choice to get the surgery in November 2022. "I don't think there's anything wrong with somebody who wants to tweak something if it makes them feel more confident. That's all I have to say about it. My confidence is back."

The former "Heroes" star has been open recently about her experiences with alcohol and drug addiction and post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter Kaya, whose father is Panettiere's ex, retired boxer Wladimir Klitschko.

Although she leaned on drugs and alcohol after her daughter was born, her reliance on drugs started well before she gave birth in December 2014, she said.

"I was being told how to be and how to live by so many people in my life," she said, explaining why she began drinking at a young age. "I wanted certain decisions to be my own, and nobody could stop me. What I put in my body was like an act of defiance."

Kaya was sent to live in Ukraine with Klitschko permanently in 2018, a decision that Panettiere said on "Red Table Talk" "wasn't fully" her own.

"I didn't even know it was happening until she was already over there," the "Nashville" star said on a September 2022 episode of the talk show.

She told Women's Health that she decided to go to treatment for herself in 2015 in the middle of "Nashville's" fourth season. But when she came out, the storyline written for her character Juliette Barnes was so close to her real life that it was hard to remain sober.

"They wrote my character as having post-partum depression. They wrote that she abandoned her child and went to a different country," she said. "And it was very difficult to go on set and to act out these feelings about these things that I was truly going through in my real life."

She eventually stopped acting but turned to alcohol to deal with her anxiety and sleep deprivation.

"My body was like, 'enough.' I hit 30. My face was swollen. I had jaundice. My eyes were yellow. I had to go to a liver specialist. I was holding on to weight that wasn't normally there. My hair was thin and coming out in clumps," Panettiere continued, explaining what led her to seek treatment again in 2021.

"After eight months of intensive therapy, I felt like I had this blank canvas to work with," she said, of her mindset after treatment.

Panettiere also said she's "looking forward to the day where I get to have these conversations" explaining her path to sobriety and self-acceptance to Kaya.

Panettiere will reprise her role as Kirby in "Scream VI" on Friday.