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, South Carolina, shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. Lifesaving 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 onscreen.”
A publicist for Panettiere has not responded to emailed requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Panettiere started out as a child actor
Panettiere began her acting career as a child in commercials and soap operas, but it was her role in “Heroes” that propelled her to fame in 2006. The series revolved around the mantra: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
“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 AP 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 nominated for a Grammy for a children’s spoken word album, “A Bug’s Life: Read-Along,” also voicing a role in the Disney animated movie.
Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on “Nashville,” which aired on ABC for four seasons before being canceled 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. Eleven songs that Panettiere recorded for “Nashville” appeared on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.
She checked herself into rehab to address alcohol addiction
Panettiere’s daughter, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was 2. At the time, the actor was struggling with mental health and addiction.
“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said in an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty in May. “That could not be farther from the truth.”
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 center. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.
Her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28.
On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled how she exploded into the public eye through “Heroes,” including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. She described her response as “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 so similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opinionated, 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.
Associated Press writer Dave Collins and National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting.
