Hayden Panettiere explains four-year career break

Hayden Panettiere has opened up to explain her four-year career break.

The Nashville star opened up about her disappearance from the public eye, explaining she had not intended to take such a long hiatus.

"I had taken four years off. Didn't know or plan to, but that's just the way it panned out," Hayden, 35, told Us Weekly. "And I desperately needed it."

"The things that I've done before ... it was just different enough that I felt like it was a blank canvas that I could paint onto anything I wanted on," she explained. "And now try to take my career in a direction that I wasn't able to go in before."

Hayden recently returned to acting to shoot her upcoming movie, A Breed Apart.

Hayden found herself taking an unplanned break from work after her TV series Nashville ended in 2018.

That period coincided with the end of her engagement to boxer Wladimir Klitschko, who subsequently took their daughter, Kaya, now nine, to live in Ukraine where the pair still resides.

The Heroes star, who has been open in the past about her struggles with substance abuse, said she continually tries to better herself.

"It's healthy to continue to keep evolving as a person," Hayden told the outlet.

"But I've never been this version of me, I've never been as OK with being who I am without feeling the need to apologise for anything. I feel like I've finally earned the right to an opinion."