Hayden Panettiere News (Page 8)

In its most recent issue, Entertainment Weekly names 100 stars it loves. Topping the magazine's list? None other than Hayden Panettiere.

Why does the magazine feel so strongly about Panettiere? We shouldn't need to tell any fan of Heroes, but here are the reasons given...

WHY HER The breakout star of TV's hottest new drama, Heroes, Panettiere plays Claire Bennet, an unbreakable high school girl who became synonymous with the show when the catchphrase ''Save the cheerleader, save the world!'' entered the pop culture lexicon. '

'I think it was very clever,'' says the New York-born actress, although she admits that calls of ''Hey, cheerleader!'' now follow her around Los Angeles. ''But it's fun. It's not an obnoxious thing.'' Technically speaking, Claire doesn't actually spend much time shaking pom-poms. ''I told [Heroes creator] Tim Kring I need to cheer at some point,'' the actress says with a laugh. ''She wears the outfit all the time!''

CROSSING OVER Her debut record, due in 2008, reflects her diverse tastes. ''I wanted to make every song sound as different as possible,'' she says. ''I hate sitting down and listening to an album where every song sounds the same.''

Panettiere, who trained to be a singer for a while and even sang jingles, co-wrote most of the album's tracks, including ''Saved,'' about the death of a friend. ''You come in with an idea of what you want to write about,'' she says of the collaborative process. ''It's fun when you have a lot of different people that you get to bounce ideas off of.''

NEXT Panettiere's day job should keep her busy for years, but she'll start working movies into her schedule before long. First up is the indie drama Fireflies in the Garden, with Julia Roberts. It's a dream job, obviously — and definitely worth sacrificing a vacation for.

''I really wanted to set the tone for the kind of things that I want to do,'' she says. In the film, Panettiere will portray a young woman who leaves home to get an abortion.

SECRET TALENT ''I can ride a zebra! I had to ride one in Racing Stripes, and I'm, like, one of the only people who's ever ridden one. The trick is to hang on tight. They're bouncy little things. And never, ever go by the rear of it. It's not fun. They'll kick the bejesus out of you.''

According to Heroes creator Tim Kring, the character of Mr. Bennet changed a lot over the course of season one.

On an NBC blog, he talks about this character's evolution, while Hayden Panettiere chimes in with how Claire also overcame obstacles on her way to heroics:

Tim: The character that went through the most change for me was Jack Coleman's character - Claire's father. Because if you paid close attention to the pilot, he only had about 8 lines of dialog. While I always imagined he'd have a presence on the show, I never imaged the big role he had and a lot of that is because of the chemistry between him and Claire. And in many ways, the most central relationship of the entire season was that between Claire and her father.

Hayden: You know, I think that in the beginning she was a normal girl dealing with normal things who wanted to date the quarterback and just fit in. I think it was a fabulous idea to make her a cheerleader cause it made her relatable to people - it reminded people of normal adolescent behavior.

And she discovers this thing she has and she looks at it as the worst thing in the world. To a teenager, it was completely dramatic, but over the course of the season she's evolved into a young woman with a beautiful naiveté who is still a young girl but who has come into her own, who has learned to embrace who she is and the ability that she's been given.

Tim: She literally became a hero. She went through the hero's journey: from reluctant and unwilling to someone who is willing to make the ultimate sacrifices. So in some ways, she's the most heroic character on the show.

E! Online posted a brief interview with Hayden Panettiere last week.

When commenting on season two of Heroes, the faux cheerleader said the following about a possible love interest:

"This show has been so broad, and it's been such an incredible thing that it seems like it can go anywhere and that she can go anywhere, so I'd like to see a change of location maybe.

Toward the end of the season, I'd like to see her get a little bit of a change of style—more sophisticated, growing into her own. I'd like to see a boy in the horizon somewhere, which I've heard rumors of."