Actress Hayden Panettiere has died at the age of 36.
“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,” her representative said in a statement to ABC News.
TMZ reported that Panettiere died earlier on Sunday, citing sources with direct knowledge. She and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson flew from Los Angeles to the South on Saturday, the sources said, and his family is aware of the death.
Law enforcement sources confirmed to TMZ that police responded to an incident involving the actress on Sunday. The publication cited a source close to the actress who said Panettiere had complained of back pain in the last year. There is currently an open investigation.
More details about her death were not immediately available. The Daily Beast has reached out to her rep for comment.
While Panettiere was a child star, starring in the soaps One Life to Live and Guiding Light, she later played Claire Bennet on the NBC superhero series Heroes from 2006 to 2010, then played Juliette Barnes in the musical drama Nashville. She earned two Golden Globe nominations for the role.
Panettiere’s death comes three months after she released a memoir on May 19 titled This Is Me: A Reckoning.
The book covered her life as a former child star and growing up in the spotlight, as well as touching on her postpartum depression and struggles with substance abuse. Panettiere had a daughter, Kaya, in December 2014 with her ex-partner, boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko. She relinquished custody in 2018 to her ex, when her daughter was 7.
“I mean it was the worst signing those papers and like the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever, ever had to do in my life,” she said in 2022.
“The papers were to give him full custody and I was gonna go work on myself and I was gonna get better,” she added. “And when I got better, then things could change and she could come to me and I could have my time with her. But that didn’t happen.”
The actress wrote about those health struggles that eventually led her to give up custody in an essay titled, “My Postpartum Addiction: After my daughter’s traumatic birth, alcohol was my only comfort,” which was published in The Cut in May.
“The first thing I’d thought of when I woke up was alcohol,” Panettiere wrote.
After experiencing anxiety following giving birth, when her daughter turned four months, Panettiere recalled feeling like she “needed a drink to function.” She had developed the daily habit while shooting Nashville.
After getting home, she would spend time with her daughter, eat dinner, and call her then-fiancé, Klitschko, then self-medicated with alcohol.
“I’d drink a bottle of wine and feel the euphoria of a blanket on me like warm water, washing away all my anxiety, self-doubt, and fears,” she wrote.
Panettiere entered rehab during the third and fourth season of Nashville.
“Trust me, it’s easier to detox and recover when you’re being treated like a queen, but it was too far from the real world to give me perspective,” she said of her time in rehab.
“I didn’t have companions to share stories with or people who understood what I was going through. I didn’t have group therapy or 12 steps,” she added, referring to the 12-step programs widely used by Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and similar groups.
During an interview with Us Weekly in May to promote her memoir, Panettiere made headlines for coming out as bisexual.
She detailed the “scary” experience of dating women while avoiding the paparazzi and said she “didn’t have the courage to throw [herself] fully emotionally into it” because she didn’t want to hide that part of herself.
While the actress said it’s “better late than never” to come out, her estranged mother, Lesley Vogel, told the Daily Mail it was “interesting timing” for her daughter to share the news now.
Vogel managed Panettiere’s career since she began working at eight months old. Speaking on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty in May, the actress said as she got older she began to view her mother as “my boss.”
“Everything was business,” the actress recalled. “I became the confidant and the assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on and everything but her child.”
Panettiere ended their professional relationship while filming Heroes, at age 19.
“I said to her, ‘I don’t want us to work together anymore. I just want you to be my mom,’ ” Panettiere recalled. While she hoped for a good response, she said her mother simply told her, “You owe me.” “And that’s all she said,” Panettiere said. “And she walked out.”
