You might have noticed that I like Heroes in general and Hayden Panettiere in particular. You also might have noticed people seeing shots of her around bars and wielding cigarettes and so on and so forth - as opposed to falling out of cars without underwear, going to jail for drunk driving etc - and worrying/hoping she'll turn out to be the next Lindsay Lohan.
Now while we're all (well, those of us who don't get their jollies from gloating over other people's trainwrecks) agreed that this would be a bad thing, we're also leaning a bit too far to the negative side, no? Everyone always goes "Paris! Lindsay! Tara!" and if they're older "Buffy from Family Affair!" but no one ever mentions Drew Barrymore, who went way off the rails in her teen years and survived to become a much cleaner adult.
No one ever mentions Jennifer Love Hewitt, who went from being a cute teenager with a nice rack to a cute grown woman with a nice rack. (Admittedly she's never been associated with rampant excess, but neither has Hayden - we're talking about a girl who, when told she'd be dropped by Neutrogena if she was ever seen with Paris Hilton again, stopped being seen with Paris Hilton.)
No one ever mentions Alyssa Milano, who successfully did something about her nice-little-Samantha-Micelli image and remains a male favourite to this day. No one ever mentions Jodie Foster, who admittedly never seemed like a little girl even when she was a little girl. And crucially, no one ever mentions River Phoenix, who had such a clean-living public persona and turned out to... well, you know. Or Paula Abdul, whose image circa 1990 was very different to what it is now and not, to be honest, in a good way. The point is, we don't know for sure what she'll turn out to be - let's just wait and see. Not everyone people eagerly count down until they're legal turns out to be a car crash waiting to happen.
You may drool now.
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P.S. Happy 16th birthday to Willa Holland, and welcome to the staff.
