Actress Hayden Panettiere had the best and worst night at the White House Correspondents Dinner after scratching her cornea when she woke up that morning and then suffering an allergic reaction.

The Scream 4 star topped most fashion lists as she stepped out in style at the posh event in Washington, D.C. last month (Apr13), just hours after a dreadful start to her day got worse.

Blinded Panettiere had to be helped out of bed by her make-up artist, hours before she suffered an allergic reaction to tea-bags in her hotel room. Then the gown she chose for the big party ripped, forcing her to choose a last-minute alternative.

She explains, "I woke up with a scratched cornea, I don't know how I did it. I'm sitting there screaming... I couldn't see out of one eye.

"We get there (to Washington, D.C.) and I have three hours to take a nap, so somebody told us to put camomile tea-bags on your eyes, so we put camomile tea-bags in an eye-patch and apparently I'm allergic to camomile tea-bags... so my eyes were almost swollen shut.

"I almost went (to the party) with an eye patch; we were thinking about blinging out an eye patch to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

"And then I got beauty look of the week thanks to Amy Oresman, my make-up artist. The other dress broke. It was a beautiful disaster, but nothing bad happened from there on out... I met a lot of cool people."