Hayden Panettiere needed a break.

The former “Nashville” star, who is returning to the big screen in the upcoming film “A Breed Apart,” revealed her four-year break from acting wasn’t planned but needed.

“I had taken four years off. Didn’t know or plan to, but that’s just the way it panned out,” Panettiere, 35, exclusively told Us Weekly. “And I desperately needed it. …

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

The break, she explained, has made her more comfortable getting back into acting.

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

“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,” she shared. “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.”

“A Breed Apart” hits theaters and streaming on May 16.

Check out the full interview at Us Weekly.

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.