Hayden Panettiere, who soared to fame two decades ago as a cheerleader with superpowers in the TV show Heroes and won country music success playing a singer on Nashville, has died. She was 36.
Police said Panettiere was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, S.C., shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. Life-saving measures were performed, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
No cause of death has been provided. There were no signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances, police said in a statement. The Greenville County Coroner’s Office will perform an autopsy.
The television star, who would have turned 37 on Friday, had been open about her struggles with alcohol addiction and depression, including after the birth of her daughter with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” her father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement provided to ABC. “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 on screen.”
WATCH | Hayden Panettiere, star of Heroes and Nashville, dead at 36:
Hayden Panettiere, star of Heroes and Nashville, dead at 36
American actress Hayden Panettiere, famed for roles in television shows such as Nashville and Heroes, has died at age 36, her family said in a statement.
A publicist for Panettiere did not immediately respond to emails from either The Associated Press and CBC News.
In her final Instagram post, dated July 27, Panettiere is seen in a black and white photo, smiling and winking alongside director and photographer Randall Slavin.
“Good times and good friends,” she said in the post.
Panettiere, who would have turned 37 on Friday, began her career as a child actor in commercials and soap operas.
Her role as a cheerleader with superpowers in Heroes propelled her to fame in 2006, with the series revolving around the mantra “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
Panettiere’s role as a cheerleader with superpowers in Heroes propelled her to fame in 2006. (Adam Taylor/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images)
“I think Heroes is really hot because it’s just a really great combination of everything that people love — they love reality, they love sci-fi and things like X-Men, where they get to dream of something bigger,” Panettiere told The Associated Press in 2008.
“And at the core of it are these human stories that people can relate to, very rugged. And it’s just grabbed everyone in every age group.”
She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role and was a Grammy Award nominee for a children’s spoken word album recorded a few years after the release of the animated movie A Bug’s Life.
2 Golden Globe nominations
Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on Nashville, which aired on ABC for four seasons before being cancelled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations.
She had 11 songs recorded for Nashville appear on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.
Panettiere played a country singer opposite Connie Britton, right, on Nashville, which aired on ABC for four seasons before being cancelled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show. (Mark Levine/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images)
Panettiere’s younger brother, Jansen, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.
In an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty after her memoir came out in May, Panettiere talked about the custody arrangement for her 11-year-old daughter, who lives full time with Klitschko in Ukraine. News of the 2018 decision had prompted headlines about Panettiere giving up custody of her daughter.
“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said. “That could not be farther from the truth.”
Panettiere worked in film and television beginning as a child. She is shown with Julie Bowen and Tim Allen at the Dec. 19, 2001, premiere in Los Angeles for the film Joe Somebody. (Vince Bucci/Getty Images)Battled depression, addiction
Panettiere said Klitschko suggested their daughter live with him full time when the child was two years old, as Panettiere struggled with mental health challenges and addiction. She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.”
She entered rehab in 2015, while filming Nashville.
“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment centre. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.
Panettiere poses on the red carpet at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in August 2014. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled the explosion of her fame when she was cast on Heroes, including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. When she’d imagined the moment as a younger actress, she’d planned to look chic.
Instead, she said, “it was just sheer terror.”
Panettiere also appeared in two of the Scream movies, starred as the title character in the 2009 film I Love You Beth Cooper and played the young daughter of a football coach in Remember the Titans.
She had spoken positively about her experience filming Remember the Titans, saying she felt similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opiniated, football-loving daughter of Will Patton’s Coach Bill Yoast.
In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere described herself as an “optimist to the core” who refused to be defined by tragedy.
“One thing I know from my 36 years in the public eye is this: Life is a process that evolves day by day, year by year and — like it or not — you are engaged in a cycle of growth until the moment you take your last breath,” she wrote.
Remembering a star
News of Panettiere’s death prompted a wave of tributes.
“What an amazing talent you were … so gifted,” actress Viola Davis, who co-starred with Panettiere in the 2016 film Custody, wrote on Instagram.
“I wish the world had more time with you because I had a burning curiosity about who you were becoming. I saw this beautiful phoenix rising from the ashes…. Rest well, Hayden.”
Shetty, who interviewed Panettiere on his podcast just months ago, said in an Instagram comment, “I can’t believe it. Our friendship had just begun.”
“I was so moved by the conversation we shared earlier this year. My love and condolences to her family and fans,” he said.
“Sending my love to Hayden and her family,” actor David Arquette, who worked with Panettiere in Scream 4 from 2011, wrote in an Instagram story. “She was such a brave and brilliant soul.”
“Oh my god — heartbroken,” talk show host, actor and comedian Rosie O’Donnell said in an Instagram post.