Child star to Heroes lead: Hayden Panettiere dies at 36, cause undisclosed

WEB DESK: Hayden Panettiere, the American actress who rose to fame as a child star before becoming known to millions for her roles in Heroes and Nashville, has died at the age of 36, her father confirmed in a statement.

Her father, Skip Panettiere, said his daughter 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,” and asked for privacy as the family grieves. Her representative separately confirmed the death to ABC News. No cause of death has been made public, and the cause and manner of death remain unclear.

A career that began at four years old

Panettiere’s career spanned three decades. She was cast on the soap opera One Life to Live at just four, made her film debut voicing Dot in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life at nine, and appeared alongside Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans in 2000. She went on to star in comedies like Raising Helen and Bring It On: All or Nothing, the latter of which became a lasting favorite for a generation of fans who grew up watching it.

She found her biggest breakthrough playing cheerleader Claire Bennet, a young woman with regenerative superpowers, in the NBC sci-fi drama Heroes from 2006 to 2010. She later earned two consecutive Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress playing an ambitious country singer in the musical drama Nashville, for which she also recorded music that charted on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs list. She also appeared in the Scream franchise, playing Kirby Reed in Scream 4 and returning as an FBI agent in Scream VI.

Personal struggles, addressed openly

Earlier this year, Panettiere released a memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she wrote candidly about growing up as a child actor and about her struggles with addiction, abuse, postpartum depression, and the loss of her younger brother, Jansen, who died in 2023 at 28 from a heart condition. She shared custody of her daughter, Kaya, born in 2014, with her former partner, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, and gave him full custody in 2018 while she sought treatment. She had spoken about wanting to correct the public narrative that she had simply abandoned her daughter.

An entertainment journalist noted that, following the memoir’s release and press tour, many in the industry believed this was shaping up to be a comeback year for Panettiere — which made the news of her death especially shocking to those who knew her.

Tributes pouring in

Tributes have come from across the entertainment industry, including actresses Selma Blair and Beverley Mitchell, Scream VI co-star Melissa Barrera, singer JoJo, TV host Rosie O’Donnell, and the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, of which Panettiere had been a member since 1994. Fans have also flooded her final Instagram post, shared just weeks earlier, with messages recalling her impact on their childhoods.

She is survived by her daughter, Kaya.