Ice Princess Director Tim Fywell Remembers Hayden Panettiere and Michelle Trachtenberg After Both Stars Lost
Tim Fywell, director of the 2005 Disney film Ice Princess, has paid tribute to Hayden Panettiere and Michelle Trachtenberg, the two young actresses at the heart of his movie, after Panettiere's death on Sunday at the age of 36 (Variety).
Panettiere was found unresponsive at an apartment complex where she had been temporarily staying and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to NBC News (NBC News). The Greenville County Coroner's Office said in a press release on Monday that she had been found in cardiac arrest (ABC News). Police did not list a cause of death (Los Angeles Times).
Trachtenberg, Panettiere's Ice Princess co-star, died in February 2025 at age 39. The loss of both actresses sent the film trending on social media as people noted that its two young leads were now both gone (Variety).
Fywell, for whom Ice Princess was his first Hollywood film, remembered Panettiere as "brave, sparky, dedicated" and said she "lit up the set in rehearsals." He described Trachtenberg as "kooky, fun, with an infectious laugh and brilliant sad-funny comic timing," and Panettiere as "plucky, determined and a perfectionist" who spent hours practising her skating. He called the shoot tough and technically complicated (Variety).
Ice Princess, released by Disney, follows Casey Carlyle, a teenager who gives up a Harvard scholarship to pursue professional figure skating and helps a rival skater, Gen, using computer-generated algorithms. Joan Cusack played Casey's mother; Kim Cattrall played Gen's. Cattrall, who was Panettiere's on-screen mother in the film, shared a tribute of her own after the news (E! News via Facebook).
Blake Lively also paid tribute to both Panettiere and Trachtenberg, asking people to choose kindness (AOL). Figure skaters honoured Trachtenberg across social media (NBC6 South Florida via Facebook).
The grief has extended beyond the Ice Princess cast. Alexa PenaVega, the Spy Kids star, wrote that her heart was heavy because Panettiere's death marked the passing of another fellow child star. Her post also mentioned Daveigh Chase, who died at age 35 in June (Variety).
For fans of a certain generation, Ice Princess was a touchstone — a family sports film built around two performers who went on to long careers. That both are now gone, barely a year and a half apart, is what pulled the film back into the conversation this week.
