Actress Hayden Panettiere, star of ‘Heroes’ and ‘Nashville,’ dies at 36

Ms. Panettiere was in cardiac arrest before she died, the coroner’s office said. In a May memoir, she detailed the difficulties she had growing up in the public eye.

Hayden Panettiere in 2022. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Hayden Panettiere, a former child actress who rose to fame in the public eye and starred in TV shows “Heroes” and “Nashville,” died Aug. 16 in South Carolina. She was 36.

South Carolina’s Greenville County Coroner’s Office confirmed her death, saying she was in cardiac arrest before she died. Emergency medical services responded to a 911 call reporting a cardiac arrest at 1:51 p.m. on Sunday at a residence in Greenville, where they found Panettiere unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at 2:32 p.m. after lifesaving measures were attempted. There were no signs of trauma, and the cause of death needs further investigation, the office said in a statement.

In May, Ms. Panettiere released a memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” in which she detailed her life growing up in the spotlight, and her struggles with postpartum depression, substance abuse and domestic abuse.

She began acting as a child, gaining her first television credit before she turned 5 on the soap opera “One Life to Live.” At 10, she starred in “Remember the Titans.”

Her big break came when she played a high school cheerleader with regenerative superpowers in “Heroes” in 2006; the TV series ran for four seasons. She later portrayed rising country artist Juliette Barnes on “Nashville.” She also had roles in the Scream horror franchise, “Bring It On: All or Nothing” and the rom-com “I Love You, Beth Cooper.”

Tributes to the actress poured in Monday. “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,” actress Viola Davis posted on Instagram.

In an interview on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast released in May, Ms. Panettiere described her debilitating anxiety, alcoholism and custody battle over her child, circumstances she said were written into her character on “Nashville.” “It felt like it never ended. I didn’t know where Juliet began and Hayden ended,” she said.

In her memoir and press tour interviews, she described her struggles with postpartum depression, drugs and alcohol, and the death of her brother three years ago. She also discussed the pressure to please everyone and her fractured relationship with her mother, who served as her manager for years in her childhood, where “everything was business.”

“I finally feel like I have shaken off all of this darkness and this negativity. … And that means I closed one door and another door is opened,” she said on the podcast. “And I can feel all the … exciting possibilities. I feel like I have a lot more life to live.”

Auditioning before she could walk

Ms. Panettiere began acting when she was 11 months old, auditioning for a Playskool train commercial. By 1994, she landed a role on ABC’s soap opera “One Life to Live.”

“Part of me just wanted to have friends, a place at a cafeteria table, teachers who were kind to me, and lots of fun at recess. But another part of me loved the rush I got from acting and the fact that it made Mom so proud,” she wrote in her memoir.

Ms. Panettiere with actor John Loprieno on “One Life to Live” in 1994. (Ann Limongello/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images)

At 10 years old, she had caught the attention of the casting director for “Remember the Titans.” She went on to play Sheryl Yoast, a football-loving preteen. “As Sheryl, I was strong and authentic, and on ‘Remember the Titans’ I was the happiest I’d ever felt as an actor,” Ms. Panettiere wrote.

Soon after, at 12, she secured a guest role as the nerdy babysitter on “Malcolm in the Middle.” The role was thanks to her mother, Lesley Vogel, who had played the wife of Bryan Cranston’s character on “Loving.” In her memoir, Ms. Panettiere recalled Cranston, an episode director for “Malcolm,” saying, “Hayden is so wrong for this role, but we’re going to make this work.”

Once Ms. Panettiere turned 17, she was well known by casting executives, and she was asked to audition for the role of Claire Bennet — the Texas cheerleader with self-healing powers on NBC’s “Heroes.” She is best known for her performance in “Heroes” and her role as Juliette Barnes on “Nashville.”

Barnes’s struggles with postpartum depression and addiction mirrored Ms. Panettiere’s life. In her memoir, Ms. Panettiere wrote about realizing the “Nashville” writers were modeling the script after her life; playing Barnes became “looking in a funhouse mirror, seeing a distorted reflection,” and diving “headfirst into my own hell.” She took a leave of absence from the show to seek professional treatment.

Struggles with addiction

Ms. Panettiere had long struggled with body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression, according to her memoir. In the book, she described one paparazzi photograph of herself that showed the back of her thighs. A magazine published it with a banner over her legs: “CELLULITE.”

At an industry event, when she was about 16, a former representative pulled her aside to offer her a “happy pill” before a press interview, she recalled in her memoir. The pills, Ms. Panettiere wrote, “were the gateway drug that ushered me toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction.”

While nerves pushed her forward as a child actor, they eventually overtook her, she wrote. She was prescribed Klonopin but turned to alcohol since it interfered less with work.

After the birth of her daughter in 2014, her drinking increased as she dealt with postpartum depression. Antidepressants wouldn’t mix well with alcohol, and “I wasn’t ready to stop drinking,” Ms. Panettiere said on a 2023 television appearance. Around the same time, an old neck injury had flared up, and she’d begun taking opioids, she said.

Ms. Panettiere developed jaundice from alcohol abuse. In the memoir, she recalled a doctor’s warning that she’d be dead in five years if she didn’t stop drinking.

She put herself in rehab during the middle of production for the fourth season of “Nashville” in 2015. The producers temporarily wrote her character out of the script. By her return, Ms. Panettiere’s personal life matched much of the script: Juliette Barnes had postpartum depression, an alcohol and pill addiction, and an impending divorce.