Hatcher was born to parents Owen and Esther Hatcher in Palo Alto, California. Her father is an electrical engineer and her mother is a computer scientist. An only child, she attended Mango Junior High (now Sunnyvale Middle School), Fremont High School in Sunnyvale and De Anza College in Cupertino.
In March 2006, Hatcher revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused from the age of 5 by Richard Hayes Stone, an uncle by marriage who was later divorced by Hatcher’s aunt. Her parents, she said, were unaware of the abuse at the time. In 2002, she assisted Santa Clara County prosecutors in indicting Stone for a more recent molestation that led his female victim to commit suicide at the age of 14. Stone pleaded guilty to four counts of molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In an interview appearing in Vanity Fair, Hatcher said she told the prosecutors about her own abuse because she was haunted by thoughts of the 14-year-old girl who shot herself, and feared Stone might escape conviction.
