Actress Hayden Panettiere Dies at 36

Hayden Panettiere, the actress known for roles as Claire Bennet on the 2000s series Heroes and Juliette Barnes on Nashville, died at age 36, according to reporting by Fox News Digital. Her representative confirmed the death to the outlet. The circumstances surrounding her death were not immediately made available, and according to NBC News, her publicist Kasey Kitchen stated that an investigation was ongoing.

Panettiere began her career at age 11 months old in television commercials, per NBC News reporting. She appeared on soap operas including One Life to Live and Guiding Light starting at age 4, and later moved into film and television roles, including an appearance in the 2000 film Remember the Titans alongside Denzel Washington, per Fox News. She voiced a character in A Bug's Life and appeared in Scream 4, Raising Helen, Ice Princess, and Bring It On: All or Nothing, according to ABC News. In 2023, she reprised her role as Kirby Reed in Scream VI.

Panettiere was born and raised in Palisades, New York, about 40 miles north of New York City, per NBC News. She has a daughter, Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, born in 2014 with her ex-fiancé, heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. According to Fox News reporting, she gave full custody of her daughter to Klitschko, with her daughter living with her father since 2018 as revealed in her memoir.

In recent years, Panettiere publicly discussed her struggles with addiction and postpartum depression. According to Fox News, at age 15 during the promotion of Heroes, she was offered "happy pills" to make her "peppy during interviews," and she later told People magazine in 2022: "I had no idea that this was not an appropriate thing, or what door that would open for me when it came to my addiction." She stated: "As I got older, the drugs and alcohol became something I almost couldn't live without."

In a 2022 Good Morning America interview carried by ABC News, Panettiere said: "I didn't know where the alcoholism was ending and the postpartum was beginning. And I ran myself pretty ragged." Last month, according to Fox News, she told the outlet: "I just knew that if I wanted to... I knew how bad a place I was in. I hid it from my daughter as much as I could."

In May 2026, she released a memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning, per ABC News. The book addressed her personal struggles and, according to NBC News reporting from 2024, her grief over the loss of her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who died unexpectedly in February 2023 at age 28 from cardiomegaly (enlarged heart) coupled with aortic valve complications. She told NBC's TODAY show in 2024: "When you lose somebody that you saw in all the important moments in your life, standing right next to you, it just rocks your world." Two years after her brother's death, according to ABC News, she told People magazine: "I will always be heartbroken about it. I will never be able to get over it. No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss."

Her father, Skip Panettiere, issued a statement carried by ABC News: "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. 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."