Hayden Panettiere shared optimism for her future months before her death aged 36
Months before her tragic death, Hayden Panettiere vowed she had 'a lot more life to live'.
The star's passing, at age 36, was announced last night (16 August) by her father in a statement to ABC News.
"It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden," Skip Panettiere told the news outlet. "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."
Lastly, he asked that her family be afforded privacy as they 'take time to process this unimaginable loss'.
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No cause of death has yet been announced.
In light of her passing, several videos and transcripts from Panettiere's final interviews have been circulating on social media, during many of which she opened up about her personal life.
The Bring It On actress appeared on Jay Shetty's On Purpose podcast back in May, where she reflected on a few years of 'darkness', during which she battled addiction and mental health issues.
On the episode, Panettiere spoke optimistically about the years ahead, claiming she'd 'shaken off all of this darkness and this negativity'.
"I’ve closed one door and another door is opened," she continued. "I can feel all the exciting possibilities.
"I feel like I have a lot more life to live."
Elsewhere on the show - during which she promoted her harrowing personal memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning - Panettiere touched upon the loss of her younger brother, Jansen, and the custody arrangement for her 11-year-old daughter, Kaya.
The youngster lives full-time with Panettiere's ex-fiancé boxer Wladimir Klitschko, in Ukraine.
She claimed the decision had been spurred by love for her child, given that she'd struggled with 'years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse'.
"The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking," Panettiere explained.
She also called out the 'misconception' that she was 'forced into treatment' for substance abuse in the past, when, in fact, she had been 'the one who sought it out'.
"I was struggling with mental health and anxiety and the postpartum and having to act my way through it and just feeling like I completely lost myself."
The TV star - who began her career as a child actor - entered rehab in 2015, while filming Nashville, she told Women's Health in 2023.
Speaking to Shetty, however, she insisted she was 'just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness'.
"By the time I finally got healthy, I felt like it would have been unfair of me to and selfish of me to, try to pull her out away from this life that she had," Panettiere said.
Shetty commented on Variety‘s Instagram post about Panettiere's passing, writing: "I can’t believe it. Our friendship had just begun and I was so moved by the conversation we shared earlier this year.
"My love and condolences to her family and fans."
A timeline of Hayden Panettiere’s troubled Hollywood career
August 1989
Hayden Panettiere is born to firefighter Skip Panettiere and Lesley Vogel, who would go on to be Hayden’s manager.
1990
Panettiere appears in a commercial at 11 months old, later landing recurring roles in soap operas as a child actor.
2004/2005
Aged 15, Panettiere said someone on her team started offering her ‘happy pills’. She later tells People: “They were to make me peppy during interviews.
"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.”
2006
Aged 17, Panettiere lands one of the defining roles of her career as Claire Bennett in Heroes.
2007-2009
Panettiere later reveals several disturbing incidents that happened during this period in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning.
Aged 18, she claims she was led onto a yacht by ‘somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector’ and placed into bed next to an ‘undressed man who was very famous’.
In 2008, she alleged a network executive kissed her on the lips at a party.
Aged 19, she said a ‘well-respected, award-winning actor’ tricked her into looking at his testicles through an unzipped fly.
In 2007, she also starts dating Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia - she is 18 and he is 30. They split in 2009.
2009
Panettiere starts dating Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
Meanwhile, her father Skip is handed two years of informal probation after pleading ‘no contest’ to spousal battery.
2013
Panettiere and Klitschko get engaged.
December 2014
Panettiere and Klitschko’s daughter Kaya is born. Panettiere endures an incredibly difficult pregnancy, haemorrhaging during her c-section and being forced to undergo a three-hour surgery.
2015
Panettiere begins suffering severe post-partum depression. She later tells Jay Shetty on his On Purpose podcast: “I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. I wasn't connecting with [Kaya] the way I should be.”
She uses alcohol to manage her mental health struggles and enters treatment when Kaya is four months old.
She later says she became dependent on medication to sleep, and then turned to drinking vodka.
2018
Klitschko presents Panettiere with custody papers asking for full custody of Kaya. After initially fighting back, she eventually accepts and Kaya goes to live with Klitschko in Ukraine.
She writes in her memoir: “Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life”
Meanwhile, her long-running role in TV show Nashville comes to an end and she doesn’t have any more TV or film roles for five years.
In the same year, she starts dating actor Brian Hickerson.
2020
Panettiere spends an eight month stint in rehab.
She experiences brutal alcohol withdrawal symptoms including insomnia and intense headaches.
Meanwhile, her now-ex Hickerson is charged with felony assault.
2021
Hickerson pleads no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse/cohabitant/girlfriend/child's parent and is sentenced to 45 days in jail and four years probation.
2023
Panettiere returns to acting, reprising her role as Kirby Reed in Scream VI.
In the same year, her brother Jansen dies aged 28 from an enlarged heart.
May 2026
Panettiere releases her memoir in which she makes disturbing allegations against film stars and industry execs from when she was a teenager.
She also opens up on her experience of postpartum depression and comes out as bisexual.
August 2026
Panettiere tragically dies. Police say: “The preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.”
Rhianna Benson