Hayden Panettiere's life of struggles alongside screen success

ByIan Youngs

Culture reporter

Hayden Panettiere, who has died at the age of 36, lived most of her life in the spotlight - from success as a child star to lead roles in hit TV shows Heroes and Nashville - but also endured struggles that went along with the pressures of fame.

Panettiere appeared in her first commercial when she was 11 months old. Her mother Lesley Vogel was an actress and set her daughter on the same path.

By the age of four, Hayden was in US TV show One Life to Live, then at eight joined another soap opera, Guiding Light.

Her natural acting ability was evident, but the burgeoning childhood career came at a cost.

"From a very young age, I lost the chance to have a normal childhood, friends, relationships, and my privacy," Panettiere wrote in her revealing autobiography, This Is Me, which was published earlier this year.

She was "groomed" to be an actor, she told the Hollywood Reporter, external. "I was like a little soldier and I always have been. No was never an option."

Panettiere's career flourished and she soon earned roles like the voice of Princess Dot in Pixar's A Bug's Life in 1998, becoming one of the youngest ever Grammy Award nominees for the accompanying children's read-along album.

She starred with Denzel Washington in American football drama Remember the Titans in 2000; and had roles in TV's Ally McBeal and 2004's Raising Helen with Kate Hudson.

When filming 2005's Racing Stripes, a children's film about a zebra who thinks it's a race horse, she suffered a back injury when she fell off a zebra, and "over 20 years later, these injuries still bother me", she wrote.

She also starred in 2006 cheerleading comedy Bring It On: All or Nothing, the third instalment in the Bring It On film series.

Also in 2006, she achieved a new level of fame when mysterious TV drama Heroes became a major hit.

Panettiere gave a likeably sparky performance as Claire, a cheerleader who regenerated if she was physically harmed, and who was at the heart of the show's "save the cheerleader, save the world" premise.

The actress was 17 when it launched and the fame came with new levels of attention, including from swarms of paparazzi. They kicked her and said "appalling" things to attempt to get a reaction, she said, while one headline trumpeted a picture of her apparent cellulite.

"I suffered from body dysmorphia for years because of that, believing that no matter how strong, thin or young I was, there was no escaping the dreaded cottage cheese thighs."

At one point, she was given a "happy pill" by a publicist to help her perform on a red carpet. That ended up being "the gateway drug that ushered me toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction", she said.

While working on Heroes, Panettiere suggested her mother should no longer be her manager. "I desperately wanted her to just be my mom," the actress said.

"I also wasn't expecting the reaction that I got, which was, 'You owe me.' That's all she said, and she walked out."

At 18, Panettiere started dating her Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia. That did not stop her being subjected to sexual harassment in Hollywood.

At a party in 2008, a TV executive kissed her on the lips - which she initially brushed off as harmless, but Ventimiglia told her was "completely inappropriate".

Later, a man who she described as "an Oscar-winning actor and director" allegedly exposed himself to her. She said he told her he had gum on his trousers - and when she looked down, "this well-respected, award-winning actor's testicles were hanging out from his unzipped fly".

And another time, someone she thought of as a friend ushered her into bed with a naked, unnamed "famous thirtysomething British singer-songwriter" while on a yacht.

"My body no longer felt like my own," Panettiere wrote. "The shock was so great it didn't even occur to me to say no." She did, however, manage to get out of the bed and run out of the room.

Panettiere met Ukrainian boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko at a party in Los Angeles when she was 19 and they began a relationship. He was 13 years older than her, and they had a daughter five years later.

After the birth, she was hit hard by postpartum depression. "I never felt any hostility or negativity toward my child, thankfully, but I wasn't connecting with her the way that I knew I should be, and I was full of stress and anxiety all the time," she told podcaster Jay Shetty, external.

She was drinking heavily. "What I was doing to suppress those emotions was not normal and it was not healthy."

Klitschko helped get her treatment but when their daughter was three, he told Panettiere he was worried about the girl when she was with her mother because of her drinking, and asked her to sign over custody.

Panettiere reacted angrily and considered a legal battle to keep their daughter, but eventually agreed because she accepted that her daughter Kaya "needed to feel at rest, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally".

She wrote: "Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, and it's hard to describe the layers of emotion, including sadness, resentment, and anger I felt because of it...

"I grieve that I'm not the mother I thought I'd be, and definitely not the mother I want to be. Trust me, no one should ever have to raise a child on FaceTime."

She remained involved in her daughter's life and added in her recent autobiography that "despite it all, the bond I have with Kaya is incredibly strong".

At the same time, Panettiere was being lauded for playing troubled country singer Juliette Barnes in TV drama Nashville, which earned her two Golden Globe nominations during its six-year run.

One critic, in Metro, wrote, external: "A character who could be the biggest stereotype going has, thanks to Panettiere's award-worthy performance, become the heart of Nashville, a believably flawed, not always easy to like character who is clearly a product of her traumatic childhood."

The distinction between the actress and her character became blurred, however.

"When I first started doing Nashville I thought, well, it's just a coincidence that our our lives are have so many similarities," she said.

"And then as the years went on, the episodes went on, and everything kept started matching up - from who Juliette Barnes was dating, to being an alcoholic, to postpartum depression, to losing her child, basically abandoning her child - then it was like, OK, this you guys are just mirroring my life."

As well as being uncanny, for Panettiere it was traumatic to act out things so similar to her real life. "I dove headfirst into my own hell," she wrote.

"I was suffering from debilitating anxiety and addiction I couldn't shake, and I had to live through it twice. First at home, as Hayden, and then in front of millions at home, as Juliette."

Shortly before Nashville finished filming, she met a new boyfriend, Brian Hickerson. He later turned violent, with Panettiere saying he would hit her head against the wall, and on one occasion beat her face so badly "I don't leave the house for weeks".

In 2021, he was jailed after pleading no contest to domestic abuse charges.

She suffered another major personal trauma in 2023 when her younger brother Jansen died, reportedly due to an enlarged heart.

Panettiere had to face more difficulties than most in her 36 years, and attempted to process them by writing her book, which was published in May.

"I've always strived to be a positive person, but I grieve all the hours I lost to addiction, my broken relationships, and my loved ones who are no longer here," she explained. "I also know I'm not alone when I say that the fact my family fell apart still stings.

"I've spent years in treatment trying to make sense of these losses, and I've concluded that the only thing I can change is myself and the person I want to be.

"If only that was easy."

She ended by telling readers she had accepted her past and had hope for the future, having learned to "walk hand in hand with my triumphs and my tragedies, because they have made me who I am".