Hayden Panettiere, Heroes and Nashville star, dies at 36

Hayden Panettiere, the actress who played the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on "Heroes" and the country singer Juliette Barnes on "Nashville", died on Sunday, August 16, at 36, five days before her 37th birthday.

Her representative confirmed the death, which TMZ first reported. Her father, Skip Panettiere, said the family was sharing "the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden", called her "an incredible light and a force of nature", and asked for privacy while the family took time to process "this unimaginable loss".

Authorities have not released a cause or manner of death. The Greenville County Coroner's Office scheduled an autopsy for Monday. Panettiere's publicist, Kasey Kitchen, said there was an investigation ongoing and that more would be known the following day.

What the police said

Police in Greenville, South Carolina, said their preliminary investigation had not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances. Investigators did not describe where or how Panettiere was found, and offered no further account of the events surrounding her death.

They did not say when their findings would be complete.

SAG-AFTRA, the actors' union that counted Panettiere as a member since 1994, mourned what it called her sudden passing and pointed to a career that began in childhood and reached across television and film. The union said its thoughts were with her daughter, family, friends and fans.

Panettiere was born on August 21, 1989, in Palisades, New York, a hamlet in Rockland County about 20 miles north of Manhattan. She would have turned 37 on Friday, August 21.

Tributes from co-stars

Actors who had worked with Panettiere across three decades reacted through the day, on Instagram and in comments on entertainment outlets' posts. Viola Davis, who starred with her in the 2016 film 'Custody,' posted a tribute that called her an amazing talent and described a young woman still becoming who she would be.

I saw this beautiful Phoenix rising from the ashes. Your tests became your testimony, and your testimony became your legacy. You will be remembered.

Melissa Barrera, who acted alongside Panettiere in "Scream VI", wrote: "Rest in peace sweet Hayden." Selma Blair commented on Panettiere's final Instagram post: "I love you. Don't be gone. Don't be gone. Please. Please." Jay Shetty, who interviewed her on his podcast in May, said their friendship had just begun and that he had been moved by the conversation they shared.

Bethany Joy Lenz, who joined "Guiding Light" in 1998 while Panettiere was playing Lizzie Spaulding, posted a longer message recalling a girl of nine or ten running through the hallways of the Screen Gems studio on East 44th Street in New York, reciting not only her own lines but everyone else's. Lenz called it a 27-year friendship.

The roles that defined her

Panettiere's breakout came in 2006 as Claire Bennet, the self-healing cheerleader at the centre of NBC's "Heroes", created by Tim Kring. She stayed with the series for its four seasons and won three Teen Choice Awards for the role, along with a Young Artist Award for supporting young actress and a Saturn Award nomination.

"Nashville" brought her a wider audience. She played the young country star Juliette Barnes from 2012 to 2018, on ABC for the first four seasons and on CMT for the last two. The role brought two Golden Globe nominations, in 2013 and 2014, and a Critics' Choice Television Award win in 2016, along with Teen Choice and People's Choice nominations.

She later joined the 'Scream' horror franchise as Kirby Reed, appearing in 'Scream 4' in 2011 and returning for 'Scream VI' in 2023.

A child star from Palisades

Panettiere started working at eleven months old, in a Playskool commercial booked by her mother, the former soap actress Lesley Vogel, who managed her career from the start. She played Sarah Roberts on "One Life to Live" from 1994, and joined "Guiding Light" as Lizzie Spaulding in 1996.

In 2000 she played Sheryl Yoast, the football-loving daughter of assistant coach Bill Yoast, in "Remember the Titans", a role that earned her a Young Artist Award. She voiced Princess Dot in "A Bug's Life", appeared in "Ice Princess" and "Bring It On: All or Nothing", and took the title role in the 2011 Lifetime film "Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy".

The attention turned harsh as she became a teenager. In her memoir she recalled being followed constantly by photographers, and being startled to see headlines about her weight when she was 16. The scrutiny, she wrote, arrived around the time 'Heroes' made her famous.

Her memoir, released in May

Panettiere published a memoir, "This Is Me: A Reckoning", on May 19 through Grand Central Publishing. The 320-page book was an instant New York Times bestseller, reaching number four on the list. She promoted it through the spring, including on "The View" and on Jay Shetty's podcast.

In it she wrote about postpartum depression, addiction and recovery, domestic abuse and the grief that followed her brother's death two years earlier.

Addiction and lost custody

Panettiere traced the start of her addiction to her teenage years. She wrote that her team gave her what she called happy pills before red carpets and interviews, pills she said she believed were amphetamines. She was 16, and described them as a gateway to years of dependence. Nobody has established independently what the pills were or who supplied them.

She gave birth to her daughter, Kaya, in December 2014 while playing Juliette Barnes, and fell into a severe postpartum depression that, she wrote, left her bedridden for days and made bonding with the baby feel insurmountable. Kaya has lived in Ukraine with her father, the former world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, to whom Panettiere was engaged. She pushed back on how that was read. "There's been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child," she told Jay Shetty in May. "That could not be farther from the truth." She said Klitschko had proposed the arrangement when Kaya was two, while she was in what she called a horrible cycle of depression, anxiety, alcoholism and substance abuse.

She said the skincare brand Neutrogena, which she had represented for a decade, dropped her after she spoke publicly about her postpartum depression.

In a People interview in July 2022, her first public account of the addiction, she spoke plainly about how far she had fallen. "I was on top of the world and I ruined it," she said, and described a pattern she could not break: "I'd think I hit rock bottom, but then there's that trap door that opens."

She wrote that her relationship with her mother, who managed her until she ended the arrangement at 19, left her feeling like a commodity rather than an artist, pressured over her weight and her work ethic. Vogel responded publicly in May, saying the drama was partly to sell books and that she had chosen estrangement after what she described as twenty years of trauma. The two were estranged when Panettiere died.

Grieving her brother

Panettiere's younger brother, the actor Jansen Panettiere, died in February 2023 at 28. The family said the medical examiner attributed his sudden death to cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart, with aortic valve complications. She spoke often about that loss, telling People she would always be heartbroken and would never get over it. Her last post on Instagram, three weeks before her death, was a photograph with the photographer Randall Slavin, captioned "Good times and good friends". In the United States, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline can be reached by call or text at 988. The SAMHSA National Helpline, for substance use and mental health, is 1-800-662-4357. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. Postpartum Support International can be reached on 1-800-944-4773.