Actress Hayden Panettiere, known for her roles in Heroes, Scream, Nashville, A Bug’s Life, and more, has died at age 36.
Hayden Panettiere
Panettiere’s representative confirmed her passing to ABC News and said the investigation into her death is “ongoing.” She died in South Carolina.
Skip Panettiere, Hayden’s father, said in a statement to ABC News 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.”
He asked for privacy “as our family takes time to process this unimaginable loss.”
Born in 1989, Hayden Panettiere’s acting career began with commercials when she was less than a year old. She portrayed Sarah Roberts in the ABC soap opera One Life to Live from 1994 to 1997 and Lizzie Spaulding in CBS soap opera Guiding Light from 1996 to 2000. She played the cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes (2006-2010) and Kirby Reed in the Scream franchise.
For Disney, she voiced the young ant Dot in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998) and Suri the lemur in Dinosaur (2000). In 2004, she voiced Yumi in the Fillmore! episode “Codename: Electric Haircut.”
She voiced Kairi in the first two Kingdom Hearts games, returning for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. She voiced Xion in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.
She played Sheryl Yoast in Walt Disney Pictures’ Remember the Titans (2000), Audrey Davis in Touchstone’s Raising Helen (2004), Maddie Dolan in the Disney Channel Original Movie Tiger Cruise (2004), Gen Harwood in Walt Disney Pictures’ Ice Princess (2005), and Juliette Barnes in the ABC/CMT series Nashville (2012-2018).
She performed the song “I Still Believe” for the 2007 film Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.
Panettiere struggled with child stardom, which she wrote about in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, published earlier this year. The book offers “a rare and intimate glimpse into her life behind closed doors, opening up about postpartum depression, addiction and recovery, trauma, domestic abuse, and loss.”
In an interview with Good Morning America in 2022, Panettierre said she “ran myself pretty ragged” and “didn’t know where the alcoholism was ending and the postpartum [depression] was beginning.”
Her brother, Jansen Panettiere, died in February 2023 from cardiomegaly at age 28. She told People, “I will always be heartbroken about it. I will never be able to get over it. No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss.”
Warner Bros.’ Racing Stripes (2005) was the only film to feature both Panettiere siblings.
She had daughter Kaya Klitschko in 2014 with ex Wladimir Klitschko.
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