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Hayden Panettiere, star of popular television series including Heroes and Nashville, has died. She was 36. Her father, Skip, announced the actor’s death in a statement provided to ABC News and The Guardian on Sunday.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen,” his statement said.
No cause of death was announced, and a publicist for Panettiere did not immediately respond to emails from either The Associated Press and CBC News.
Panettiere, who would have turned 37 on Friday, began her career as a child actor in commercials and soap operas.
Her role as a cheerleader with superpowers in Heroes propelled her to fame in 2006, with the series revolving around the mantra “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
“I think Heroes is really hot because it’s just a really great combination of everything that people love — they love reality, they love sci-fi and things like X-Men, where they get to dream of something bigger,” Panettiere told The Associated Press in 2008.
“And at the core of it are these human stories that people can relate to, very rugged. And it’s just grabbed everyone in every age group.”
She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role and was a Grammy Award nominee for a children’s spoken word album recorded a few years after the release of the animated movie A Bug’s Life.
2 Golden Globe nominations
Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on Nashville, which aired on ABC for four seasons before being cancelled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations.
She had 11 songs recorded for Nashville appear on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.
Panettiere’s younger brother, Jansen, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.
She had been open about her struggles with alcohol addiction and depression, including after the birth of her daughter in 2014 with former heavyweight champion boxer Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine.
In an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty after her memoir came out in May, Panettiere talked about the custody arrangement for her 11-year-old daughter, who lives full time with Klitschko in Ukraine. News of the 2018 decision had prompted headlines about Panettiere giving up custody of her daughter.
“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said. “That could not be farther from the truth.”
Battled depression, addiction
Panettiere said Klitschko suggested their daughter live with him full time when the child was two years old, as Panettiere struggled with mental health challenges and addiction. She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.”
She entered rehab in 2015, while filming Nashville.
“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment centre. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.
On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled the explosion of her fame when she was cast on Heroes, including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. When she’d imagined the moment as a younger actress, she’d planned to look chic.
Instead, she said, “it was just sheer terror.”
Panettiere also appeared in two of the Scream movies, starred as the title character in the 2009 film I Love You Beth Cooper and played the young daughter of a football coach in Remember the Titans.
She had spoken positively about her experience filming Remember the Titans, saying she felt similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opiniated, football-loving daughter of Will Patton’s Coach Bill Yoast.
