Hayden Panettiere is a smart cookie. She’s 20 years old now, and she knows that she has to adapt or die.

So she has. Hayden Panettiere realises that she won’t be the adorable schoolgirl forever, so she’s decided to carve out a new identity for herself. And that identity is the adorable slag who’ll show you her norks and clodge for 50p because her sassy facade hides a crippling lack of self-esteem.

In other words, Hayden Panettiere gets slightly naked in her new movie, and she wants to get completely naked for another movie soon. Also, watch her new movie please.

These are not good times for Hayden Panettiere. A few years ago she was the toast of Tinseltown. She had it all – youth, all-American good looks, sass, a decent singing voice, a body that looked decent when wrapped in a cheerleader’s outfit and a role on Heroes – the brand new Lost-like TV show that was going to be a runaway hit and make her a star.

But now? Now things don’t look so good. Hayden Panettiere is now 20, so if she keeps dressing up as a cheerleader she’s bound to start coming off like a ropey pub stripper before long. Her sass has manifested itself in a bizarre compulsion to offend the Japanese at every turn. Her singing voice has so far only been used to record an unthinkably bad Paris Hilton rip-off song. And, rather than become a runaway hit, Heroes turned out to be so dreary and impenetrable that it’s only watched by about three people, and they only watch only because the batteries in their remote control ran out and they can’t be bothered to stand up and physically turn the TV off.

So what’s Hayden Panettiere to do? Simple – take some of her clothes off for a rubbish low-rent movie and promise that if enough people go and see it she’ll take the rest off for her next one.

Hayden Panettiere is currently promoting I Love You, Beth Cooper – a knockabout comedy about an attractive student that’s completely different to John Tucker Must Die, which was a different knockabout comedy about a different attractive student starring a different supposed television break-out star who nobody’s ever heard of since – in which she gets naked. Sort of. Hayden Panettiere sort of gets naked in it. You see perhaps an eighth of her bare back for a couple of seconds. But by jove, it’s given Hayden Panettiere the nudity bug. She told E!:

“I’m cool with my body. I’m cool running around undressed and all that stuff, but there are just certain things that not everyone needs to know, that you need to keep somehow private and personal to you… You never know, you never know. I could be 30 years old and just be like: ‘Screw it – I want to take it all off. I better take a picture of this baby before it all goes.’”

You hear that? In exactly one decade Hayden Panettiere might get naked for a film, and she’s not just saying that to drum up publicity for her new film. She really means it. And, personally, we can’t wait. In fact, we can’t work out what we’re most looking forward to – seeing Hayden Panettiere naked come the year 2019, trying to remember who Hayden Panettiere is come the year 2019 or marvelling at what eight years in the celebrity wilderness and a potential desperation-fuelled drug habit did to Hayden Panettiere’s body come the year 2019. It’s exciting!

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