Hayden Panettiere, Star of Heroes and Nashville, Dies at 36
Hayden Panettiere, the actress whose career spanned from childhood commercials to primetime stardom, died on Sunday at age 36. Her representative confirmed the news to ABC News, which first reported the death ABC News.
She died five days before her 37th birthday. The cause of death has not been announced Variety.
Her father, Alan Lee "Skip" Panettiere, issued a statement confirming her passing. "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden," he wrote, describing her as "an incredible light and a force of nature" The Hollywood Reporter. She is survived by her father, her estranged mother Lesley Vogel, and her 11-year-old daughter Kaya New York Post.
Panettiere's life in front of the camera began almost from infancy. She landed her first commercial at eleven months old, raised in Palisades, New York. By age five she had a role on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live. Her breakthrough came at ten, playing the daughter of Denzel Washington's coach in Remember the Titans (2000) Variety.
She came close to another early landmark — she lost the role of Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room to Kristen Stewart after Nicole Kidman withdrew from the project with an injury Variety.
Her most recognised roles followed across television and film. She played the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC superhero series Heroes, which ran from 2006 to 2010. She starred as country singer Juliette Barnes on Nashville, the ABC and CMT drama that ran from 2012 to 2018. And she appeared as Kirby Reed in the Scream film franchise Variety.
Behind the public profile, Panettiere struggled for years with drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression. Her brother, Jansen Panettiere, died of heart complications in 2023 Variety.
In May 2026, three months before her death, Panettiere published a memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. In it she recounted being kissed on the lips by what she described as "an important executive at NBC" at a party in 2008, while she was starring on Heroes. She also wrote that an "Oscar-winning actor and director" had cornered her at age 19 at an apartment party in the Los Feliz neighbourhood of Los Angeles and tricked her into looking at his exposed testicles Variety.
Panettiere's career, begun before she could speak, placed her in some of the highest-profile television and film franchises of the 2000s. Her memoir made public the difficulties behind that career — difficulties she had carried since childhood.
