American actress Hayden Panettiere, best known for her roles in the television series Heroes and Nashville, has died at the age of 36. Her death was announced by her father, Skip Panettiere.
The actress did not live to see her 37th birthday for five days. The cause of her death was not reported, but during the examination it was determined that Panettiere died of cardiac arrest, and no injuries were found on her body.
“The preliminary investigation did not reveal any indication that the death was caused by foul play or suspicious circumstances,” police in Greenville, South Carolina, where the actress died, said in a statement.
Panettiere's career began early - she was only four years old when she landed a role in the popular American soap opera One Life to Live.
Over the next three decades, she played numerous roles in popular television series and films, including the horror film franchise Scream, the romantic comedy Fashionable Mom and the 2024 feature Amber Alert.
Panettiere was born in August 1989 and grew up in Palisades, New York, the son of actress and producer Leslie Vogel and former firefighter Skip Panettiere.
Her younger brother Jenser, who also became an actor, died in 2023 at the age of 28.
Her work in the late 1990s and early 2000s included roles in the animated film The Adventures of Flick, as well as the television series Ally McBeal and Malcolm in the Middle.
In 2004, she starred opposite Kate Hudson in the film Fashionable Mom, and in 2006 she became the favorite of an entire generation of viewers thanks to her role as Britney Allen in the teen cheerleader film Bring It On 3: All or Nothing.
This year, she released a memoir called This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she recounted the challenges of growing up as a child actress, as well as her experiences with drug addiction, abuse and subsequent recovery.
In May, Panettiere told the BBC's US affiliate CBS News how her mother started taking her to auditions when she was just an "eight-month old baby".
“From then on, it all resulted in 50 commercials before I was five years old... It just never stopped,” the actress recalled of her childhood.
2006 saw her biggest career breakthrough when she landed another role as a cheerleader—this time with the supernatural ability of rapid cellular regeneration—in the wildly popular sci-fi series Heroes.
The series aired until 2010 and received many awards and nominations, including the Emmy and Golden Globe awards.
In 2009, Hayden Panettiere began dating Ukrainian boxer Vladimir Klitschko, and in 2013 the couple announced their engagement.
In 2014, their daughter Kaya-Evdokia was born. In 2015, the girl was baptized at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Vladimir’s older brother, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, was also present at the ceremony.
Hayden visited Kyiv with Klitschko during Euromaidan in the winter of 2013–2014 and repeatedly expressed support for the Ukrainian people.
In 2018, it became known that Vladimir Klitschko and Hayden Panettiere broke up, and the daughter remained under the full custody of her father.
The actress said in media interviews, as well as in her memoirs, that she faced postpartum depression and addiction to alcohol and opioids.
“A lot of women go through this,” she said in 2015 on the US talk show Live with Kelly and Michael.
In an interview with US Weekly in May 2026, Hayden said she voluntarily signed the papers to relinquish custody of her child and called it "the worst day of my life."
“It was a real nightmare and I felt completely helpless. I couldn't do anything about it. A big part of me wanted to fight, but ultimately I had to think about what was most important—how this would affect my daughter. Sometimes you have to do the hardest things in the world for your children. Vova is an incredible father and I know he did what he thought was best for our daughter. The fact that we lived on different continents made our situation even more complicated,” said the actress.
In one of her last interviews, she also noted that she and Vladimir Klitschko remained “close friends who share a special bond.”
After giving birth, Panettiere continued to actively act and played promising country singer Juliette Barnes in six seasons of the television drama Nashville, which aired from 2012 to 2018.
For this role, she received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and her songs appeared on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs chart 11 times.
