Hayden Panettiere Says Her Pink Hair Was the Product of a 'Creative' Refresh amid Hollywood Strikes: 'Why Not?'

The actress swapped her trademark blonde locks for a pastel pink 'do in September

Hayden Panettiere is revealing what inspired her to go pink.

Back in September, the actress, 34, surprised her fans by swapping her trademark blonde hair for a sassy pastel pink hue. Now, in a new interview for IRK Magazine this month, Panettiere has explained that suddenly having an open schedule amid the Hollywood strikes presented her with an opportunity to experiment with her look in a way she hadn't been able to before.

"I’ve had pink hair before, and I loved it! I’ve been begging my team to let me dye it for a while now, and given what I had on my slate with work and photo shoots, I wasn’t able to," she told the magazine.

"Then the strike hit, so I thought… why not!?" she continued. "I’m not filming anything right now, and it’s an opportunity to do what I want with it and be creative differently."

When Panettiere first debuted her pink 'do by sharing a selfie on Instagram, it was unclear at the time whether the color change was simply temporary, especially as the snap appeared to have been taken at a photo studio.

"Pink hair don’t care!" she captioned the post, adding the hashtags #photoshoot #pinkhair #glamteam.

However, Panettiere has stuck with the pink since then. She even gave it some extra punch with the addition of a touch of green at the roots. “Love my new watermelon 🍉 vibes up top!" she joked on Instagram in September as she shared two photos of her updated look.

She gave another nod to the watermelon inspiration in a follow-up post which featured a photo of her with a box of South Patch Kids Watermelon candies. "Yum 🍉," she wrote.

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The Nashville star told IRK that she has "always loved color" when it comes to her overall style.

"Especially bright colors, so that hasn’t changed," she told the outlet, also explaining that when she became an adult, she began to experiment and explore her identity through fashion.

"I began to be encouraged to embrace who I am and the type of image I want to project," she said. "In doing that, I’ve grown to love fashion so much more because it’s become a creative and freeing form of expression — not something that confines me."

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Her love of color and self-expression has her toying with the idea of creating a makeup line. "I love color art, so any opportunity to be creative in that way is always fun. My makeup artist [Janice Daoud] and I have been brainstorming a few ideas," she told IRK.

While she didn't offer any details, she did tease that her collection would be "be different and unlike anything else."

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