American actress Hayden Panettiere, star of Heroes and Nashville, dies at 36
Panettiere was known for her roles in TV shows such as Nashville and Heroes.
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American actress Hayden Panettiere, known for her roles in TV shows such as Nashville and Heroes, has died at the age of 36, her family said in a statement issued by her publicist on Sunday (Aug 16).
No cause was stated, but the death of the nominee for a Grammy and two Golden Globe awards was being investigated, the publicist, Kasey Kitchen, told broadcaster NBC News.
"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," said her father, Alan "Skip" Panettiere.
A former child actor, Panettiere gained recognition voicing Dot, the young princess ant in Pixar's 1998 animated hit, A Bug's Life. Her work on the film's read-along album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.
She shot to fame playing a high school cheerleader with superpowers, Claire Bennet, on NBC's serialised hit Heroes, which debuted in 2006 and revolved around the mantra “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
She also appeared in the 2000 football drama Remember The Titans, starring Denzel Washington.
"We join in mourning the sudden passing of Hayden Panettiere," the screen actors' union SAG-AFTRA, which counted her as a member since 1994, said in a statement. "Our hearts are with her daughter, family, friends and fans."
Panettiere earned two Golden Globe nominations, in 2013 and 2014, for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for her role as Juliette Barnes in the musical drama Nashville.
She was also part of the satirical horror Scream franchise.
Panettiere's most recent appearance was in the psychological thriller Sleepwalker, released in January 2026, playing a grieving mother plagued by sleepwalking episodes, website IMDb shows.
Her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, released in May, portrayed the trauma around the difficult 2014 birth of her daughter, and her subsequent battles with postpartum depression and alcohol addiction then.
Panettiere also spoke of estrangement from her mother, who managed her career as a child and criticised the book.
TRIBUTES POUR IN
Paying tribute, actress Viola Davis, who starred alongside Panettiere in the 2016 movie "Custody," referred to her struggles.
Davis called her "an old, wise soul with such a deep heart" and said "your tests became your testimony, and your testimony became your legacy."
"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," she wrote on Instagram.
Jay Shetty, a podcaster who interviewed Panettiere this May about her addiction history and the sudden death of her brother at the age of 28 in 2023, said he was in "disbelief."
"You were so special," he wrote on Instagram.
Panettiere had a daughter Kaya with former fiance and Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014. In one of her final interviews before her death, she told parenting magazine Mome last month that the extremely painful and dangerous birth had left her depressed and made her turn to alcohol.
She then gave custody of her daughter to Klitschko. Kaya lives with Klitschko in Ukraine, Panettiere said this year.
"I was going through a really challenging time in my life," she said in the interview. "I knew I needed to be able to put her first so that I could get the help I needed and be the mom she needed me to be."
In an interview with NPR radio in May, Panettiere said she was able to cry on cue just by channeling difficult emotions. The skill helped her career but "the thoughts and the places that I had to go in my head became darker and darker."
"How could that not have an emotional impact over time on you?" she asked.
Her brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, 28, died in 2023 from complications related to an enlarged heart and an aortic-valve condition, the family told US media that year.
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