US actress Hayden Panettiere, best known for the television series Heroes and Nashville, has died at the age of 36. Her father, Skip Panettiere, announced the news in a statement, describing her as an “incredible light and a force of nature.”
Born in August 1989 and raised in Palisades, New York, Panettiere began acting as a child. At just four years old she was cast on the soap opera One Life to Live. Her early credits included the animated film A Bug’s Life, as well as the TV shows Ally McBeal and Malcolm in the Middle. In 2004 she appeared alongside Kate Hudson in the romantic comedy Raising Helen, and in 2006 played Britney Allen in the cheerleading movie Bring It On: All or Nothing.
That same year marked her breakthrough role in the sci-fi series Heroes, where she portrayed a cheerleader with the power of rapid cellular regeneration. The show aired until 2010 and picked up numerous Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Panettiere then starred as up-and-coming country singer Juliette Barnes in Nashville, which ran from 2012 to 2018. The role brought her two Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress and produced 11 entries on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. She also took part in the Scream film franchise, appearing as Kirby Reed in Scream 4 (2011) and Scream VI (2023).
Her brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, died in 2023 at the age of 28. Panettiere had a daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she was in a relationship from the late 2000s until 2018. She previously spoke about entering a treatment facility for postpartum depression after her daughter’s birth, telling the US talk show Live With Kelly And Michael in 2015 that it was “something a lot of women experience.”
Earlier this year, Panettiere released a memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, recounting the difficulties of growing up as a child actor and her experiences with addiction, abuse and recovery. In May, she told CBS News that her mother took her into audition rooms as an eight-month-old baby, saying her career “went from there and progressed into 50 commercials by the time I was five… It just never stopped.”