Hayden Panettiere, celebrated star of “Heroes ”and “Nashville”, dies at 36

Ryan ColemanMon, August 17, 2026 at 3:22 AM UTC

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Hayden Panettiere in Los Angeles in 2022Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via GettyKey Points -

Hayden Panettiere has died at 36.

A representative for the actress celebrated the “incredible light” and “immeasurable love and joy” she brought to fans, friends, and family in a statement announcing her death.

Panettiere was best known for her performances in series like Heroes and Nashville, and films like Scream 4, Ice Princess, and I Love You, Beth Cooper.

Hayden Panettiere, the celebrated star of series like Heroes and Nashville and films like Scream 4 and I Love You, Beth Cooper, has died. She was 36.

“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,” a rep tells Entertainment Weekly in a statement on behalf of the actress’ father Alan “Skip” Panettiere. “We ask for privacy as our family takes  time to process this unimaginable loss.”

ABC News was the first to report Panettiere’s death on Sunday evening.

Panettiere began working in the entertainment industry before she’d even turned a year old. Born Hayden Lesley Panettiere on Aug. 21, 1989, and raised in Palisades, N.Y., Panettiere was inducted early into the family trade by her mother, Loving actress Lesley Vogel.

She appeared in commercials as a toddler and landed her first major screen role on the soap opera One Life to Live in 1994. She played the recurring character Sarah Roberts for three years, going on to play Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light from 1996 to 2000.

Hayden Panettiere as Clarie Bennet on ‘Heroes’Credit: Michael Muller/NBC/Getty

In a 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Panettiere reflected on the special connection her soap roots fostered with future Malcolm in the Middle costar Bryan Cranston, who cast her in a 2003 episode of the sitcom that led to a fan-favorite guest arc.

“So I went into the audition, and I did the audition, and I looked at him and I said, ‘Can you please come and say hi to my mother?’ And, of course, like, he can see how this might play out... he was expecting to go out into the waiting room and meet some crazy stage mom who had a massive crush on him,” Panettiere reflected, revealing that Vogel and Cranston had costarred on Loving.

“It was to the point that all the producers and the casting director and everyone followed him out into the green room, and he saw my mom, and my mom just said, ‘Hi, Bryan.’ It took him a second, but just to see his face go from, ‘Who are you? How do I know you?’ to ‘Oh my God,’ it was really special,” she shared.

Hayden Panettiere and Frankie Muniz on ‘Malcolm in the Middle’Credit: 20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett

Roles followed on series like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Ally McBeal, in which Panettiere played Maddie Harrington, the long lost daughter of Calista Flockhart’s titular heroine in the series final season. She also starred in films like Remember the Titans, Ice Princess, and A Bug’s Life (the companion read-along earned her a Grammy nomination at just 10 years old) before landing her breakthrough.

Panettiere starred as the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on NBC’s Heroes in 2006, spending five years on that series and seven in her other landmark project, Nashville, which ran from 2012 to 2018. The twin runs of these series earned Panettiere an enduring place in television history when she was still quite young.

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She opened up to EW about her struggles shooting the latter series once it was in the rear view.

“When I read this role and I read the scripts I was like, ‘If there’s been a character in my career that I could play and do justice, this is the character,’” Panettiere said of the fiery country pop star Juliette Barnes. But Panettiere’s own struggles with substance use and grief began to show up in her Nashville pages like clockwork. “Like when I was dealing with postpartum depression, the fact that I got to go out there and had to perform through it — it was terrifying, and very emotional,” she said.

“There was a lot that I related to,” Panettiere reflected. “Sometimes a little bit too much. It hit really close to home.”

Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere on ‘Nashville’Credit: Chris Hollo/ABC

Panettiere became more and more open about her turbulent experience surviving Hollywood starting in her infancy as she transitioned out of her peak TV period into roles in films like Custody and as the character Kirby Reed in Scream 4 and Scream VI.

She released the memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, this past May. She told EW that month about how momentous the project was for her, describing the book as “the first project where there was nobody there to direct me or give me real guidance... I just had to have a lot of trust in myself. I’m excited that the book’s done, but I’m also terrified all at the same time.”

“You couldn’t write the things that have happened in my life,” she explained. But it was finally time to tell her story in her “own words.”

Panettiere was the mother of a young daughter, Kaya, with boxing champ Wladimir Klitschko. The actress gave up custody of Kaya to Klitschko, with whom she split in 2018, amid her battle with addiction at that time, per PEOPLE.

In 2025, Panettiere’s brother, Jansen, died from heart complications.

Melissa Barrera posted a tribute to her Scream VI costar on Instagram Stories on Sunday night with a broken-heart icon: “Rest in peace sweet Hayden.”

on Entertainment Weekly

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