Hayden Panettiere says she “desperately needed” to take time out of work.

The 35-year-old actress rose to fame as a teenager when she starred on the superhero series Heroes, and she remained on screen consistently for a number of years, including on the hit show Nashville.

But as she returns to the spotlight in a new film A Breed Apart, she admits that her time away meant she could explore new things upon her comeback.

“I had taken four years off. Didn’t know or plan to, but that’s just the way it panned out,” she tells Us Weekly. “And I desperately needed it.”

“It happened organically. 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,” Panettiere says.

“And now try to take my career in a direction that I wasn’t able to go in before.”

She now feels “much more solid and grounded” within her career and wants to continue “evolving” as time goes on.

“I feel much more solid and grounded in this world, the crazy world that we live in,” she adds.

“It’s healthy to continue to keep evolving as a person. Which I always try to do to keep reinventing ourselves and learning more things about ourselves and our wants and needs and dislikes and all the above.”

“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 apologize for anything. I feel like I’ve finally earned the right to an opinion.”

The Scream star also admits that when it comes to her new role in the upcoming thriller, it was the chance to be “physical” on screen that made her want to commit to the project.

“The biggest thing that drew me to this character was the action part of it. It’s fun. You get to be physical. I get to use my athleticism,” Panettiere says. “And also working with cameras and at the same time, and it’s just like this perfect dance that has to be created. It adds a whole other element to what we do.”