Before Her Death, Hayden Panettiere Spoke Candidly About Trauma, Motherhood and Mental Health Struggles

In the months before her death at age 36, actress Hayden Panettiere had spoken with unusual candor about the traumas that had shaped her life, from a childhood spent performing catastrophe on screen to her adult struggles with addiction, postpartum depression and an abusive relationship.

Panettiere, known for her roles in “Heroes” and “Nashville,” was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, and was pronounced dead at the scene on Sunday, police said. A cause of death has not yet been established, but authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

Her death came just months after the publication of her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” a book in which she said she wanted to be “brutally honest” about “every aspect of my life, from childhood to now.” Speaking to The Independent in May, Panettiere described the process of writing the book. “I had to learn not to be afraid of what people would think about it. Or if they would judge me,” she said.

Panettiere began performing as an infant, when her mother, former soap opera actress Lesley Vogel, started bringing her to commercial auditions. She went on to voice Princess Dot in the 1998 Pixar film “A Bug’s Life” and appeared in soap operas as a young child. In her memoir, Panettiere wrote about how the traumatic storylines she portrayed as a child actor shaped her early understanding of attention and love. “Grown-ups gave me positive attention when — as an actor — I failed, got sick, screamed and cried, killed, grieved, and suffered,” she wrote. “Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life? I’ve often wondered whether — unintentionally — I’ve brought on my traumas because I’m wired to think they’re good for me.”

Panettiere achieved mainstream fame in 2006 for her role as a superpowered cheerleader on NBC’s “Heroes,” a breakthrough that prompted her entire family to relocate to Los Angeles. Speaking to Jay Shetty on his podcast “On Purpose,” Panettiere described the strange dynamics that success brought to her family life as a teenager. “My mum bought an apartment for me when I was 16 and my whole family lived in it. So again, it was just that very strange, uncomfortable feeling of the role reversal and desperately wanting to still feel like the kid and still feel like I had parents to lean on,” she said. She described her mother as functioning primarily as her manager throughout her childhood, a dynamic that shaped how she understood approval. “She was my boss, that’s how I saw her. Even if she was the most supportive person when I did what I was supposed to do and did it well and was the one cheering me on, it did feel like it was what I had to do to get her love,” Panettiere said.

In 2014, at age 25, Panettiere welcomed her daughter, Kaya, with her then-partner, former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko. The birth itself was medically traumatic; Panettiere told the outlet Momé in July that she experienced severe hemorrhaging following delivery, requiring seven blood transfusions and surgery. She said that when she was finally able to see her newborn daughter after the operation, she “felt nothing.” “I had always heard that mums feel an instant rush of love, but I didn’t — and I had no idea why,” she told Momé. After attempting to self-medicate with alcohol, Panettiere eventually sought professional help and received a diagnosis of postpartum depression, which she first spoke about publicly in 2015 on the talk show “Live with Kelly and Michael.”

Panettiere later described the broad and often misunderstood spectrum of postpartum depression symptoms, pushing back against narrow public assumptions about the condition. “When they tell you about postpartum depression, you think about, ‘Okay, I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure my child, I want to hurt my child,’” she said. “I’ve never ever had those feelings and some women do, but you don’t realise what broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on, and it’s something, I think, that needs to be talked about and women need to know that they’re not alone.” She added that public skepticism toward the condition compounded its difficulty. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding and I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their mind. It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable and it’s really painful and scary,” she said. Panettiere also told Shetty that cosmetics brand Neutrogena ended a decade-long endorsement deal with her after she spoke publicly about her postpartum depression, citing a morality clause in her contract. “Of all the things I had been caught doing, that being the thing where they drew the line, was shocking to me,” she said.

On the set of “Nashville,” Panettiere said the storylines written for her character, Juliette Barnes, closely mirrored what she was privately experiencing at the time, including struggles tied to pregnancy, substance use and early motherhood. “I was suffering from debilitating anxiety and an addiction I couldn’t shake, and I had to live through it twice. First at home, as Hayden, and then in front of millions as Juliette,” she wrote in her memoir. She told Shetty the boundary between herself and her character became difficult to distinguish. “I didn’t know where Juliette ended and Hayden began,” she said. “I couldn’t come up to air from it.” To manage her anxiety and panic attacks during that period, she said she turned to substances. “I was self-medicating and looking for relief at the bottom of a bottle … I needed to self-numb,” she said.

When Panettiere and Klitschko separated in 2018, their daughter, then 2 years old, began living full time in Ukraine with her father. Panettiere was in the midst of her struggles with substance abuse at the time. “It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, nor was it a decision I even wanted to make,” she told Momé. “I was going through a really challenging time in my life … I knew I needed to be able to put her first so that I could get the help I needed and be the mum she needed me to be.” She said she remained close to her daughter despite the distance. “I love my daughter, and I’m so proud of the young woman she is becoming. I talk to her all the time, and I feel so connected to her,” she said.

Panettiere also spoke to Shetty about the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship, describing the sustained effort required to fully end contact. “At one point I thought I had gotten out of it and gotten away from it,” she said. “Abusers, they weave themselves like weeds into your life and there’s always something that they left behind. There’s always something they have to come back for, there’s always something that they find to keep that connection, keep you on the hook.” She said she initially believed she could manage the separation alone before recognizing she needed outside help. “I thought I was capable of doing it by myself but I needed an incredible amount of support and back-up in order to make sure that there was no way for him to find his way back in,” she said.

Panettiere’s final Instagram post, shared July 27, showed a photo of her with photographer Randall Slavin, captioned simply, “Good times and good friends.” In her memoir, she described herself as an “optimist to the core” who resisted being defined by tragedy, despite the many hardships she experienced throughout her life, including the sudden death of her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, in 2023. “One thing I know from my 36 years in the public eye is this: Life is a process that evolves day by day, year by year and — like it or not — you are engaged in a cycle of growth until the moment you take your last breath,” she wrote.

This story discusses sensitive topics including postpartum depression, addiction and domestic abuse. If you or someone you know is struggling with any of these issues, support is available. In Australia, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36, or 1800RESPECT for domestic violence support. In the United States, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.