Politics
Trump Does Kim Jong Un A Favour
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he has ordered the Pentagon to scale back the joint military exercises with South Korea that began this week.
In a Truth Social post, the president said his decision was based on his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” and described North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful.” He also condemned South Korea for declining to help the US de-nuclearise Iran.
The joint exercises were expected to last 11 days and involve 18,000 South Korean soldiers, The Associated Press reported. In a statement carried by state media Friday, North Korea described the training as “a rehearsal for an aggressive war.”
Trump said that he sees the exercises as “hostile” to North Korea and costly for the US, but because it was too late to cancel them, he had ordered a reduction instead.
On Saturday, Trump posted a photo of himself standing next to the North Korean dictator and said the two get along well “despite the unfriendly look on this particular picture.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what scaling back the exercises would entail. South Korea’s Defense Ministry told AP that the drills had started on Monday local time as planned.
According to The New York Times, the two countries have conducted joint military exercises for over 70 years. Such exercises have been dedicated to honing the readiness of US and South Korean troops so they’re prepared to respond to North Korea’s military and weapons capabilities.
Historically, North Korean leaders have criticized the exercises while finding ways to capitalize on them. Experts told The AP that North Korea has used the exercises as a “pretext” to do its own weapons testing and curry goodwill for Kim. Just last week, North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea ahead of the start of the drills.
Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images
It’s also not the first time that Trump has sought to curtail the exercises. He suspended the exercises in 2018 as part of denuclearization talks with North Korea, BBC News reported.
Critics of Trump’s announcement on Sunday emphasized that the move essentially aligned the US president with an authoritarian leader, while undermining America’s long relationship with South Korea.
“Our ability to help defend our ally against the North Koreans is because our forces are well trained and able to coordinate with the South Koreans,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wrote on X. “Hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake.”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
We’re afraid there’s been a disappointing update for anyone hoping to see Madonna making her Pyramid Stage debut next year.
Back in June, ahead of the release of her latest hit album Confessions II, the Queen of Pop sat down for a chat with presenter (and superfan!) Graham Norton for a one-off BBC special.
During their conversation, Madonna sparked rumours that she could be performing at Glastonbury when it returns next year, teasing: “I think I’ll do promo tours for a while. Then, in the summertime, something bigger.”
When Graham questioned whether it was something “in this country”, referring to the UK, she added cryptically: “It could be. Why do I have to tell you everything?”
At the time, many interpreted this as a nod to a future Worthy Farm performance, though Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis has now poured water on this speculation.
Speaking to Radio 4, Emily said that while she can’t disclose who will be headlining in 2027, “it’s definitely not Madonna, I’ll tell you that”.
“We have got three headliners and we’re very excited about it – it’s all coming together really well,” she added.
Emily was then asked whether Taylor Swift was one of them, at which point she laughed off the question and said she wanted to change the subject.
Taylor was originally supposed to make her Glastonbury debut in 2020, following the release of her Lover album, but the festival was eventually cancelled that year due to the Covid pandemic.
Since then, the Grammy winner has released five studio albums, racked up six more UK number one singles and embarked on her record-breaking Eras Tour, but has yet to book another spot on the Glastonbury line-up.
Recent Pyramid Stage headliners have included modern chart-toppers Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Dua Lipa and Kendrick Lamar, as well as acts like Coldplay, The Cure, Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney.
Meanwhile, The Sun claimed last month that Madonna had “cooled on the idea” of performing at Glastonbury, and would instead book three nights at the British Summer Time festival at London’s Hyde Park for 2027 instead.
With mere weeks to go until we can tuck into the main delicacy that is Nigella Lawson’s Great British Bake Off debut, bosses have given us a little amuse bouche to tide us over until then.
On Monday morning, producers shared a first-look photo of Bake Off’s new family together for the first time, ahead of the show’s return to our screens, which is expected to take place next month.
“Life is about to get sweeter,” they teased, alongside the picture of Nigella with her new colleagues Paul Hollywood, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding.
“Bake Off is coming soon…”
Although an exact return date for Bake Off is still being kept under wraps for now, the show’s launch has taken place in early September since 2020, so it’s a fair bet that this year will follow suit.
The new season will be Nigella’s first since taking over from long-serving judge Prue Leith.
Nigella said when the news was confirmed in January: “I’m uncharacteristically rather lost for words right now!” she enthused.
“Of course it’s daunting to be following in the footsteps of Prue Leith and Mary Berry before her, great dames both, but I’m also bubbling with excitement.”
She continued: “The Great British Bake Off is more than a television programme, it’s a National Treasure – and it’s a huge honour to be entrusted with it.
“I’m just thrilled to be joining the team and all the new bakers to come, I wish the marvellous Prue all the best, and am giddily grateful for the opportunity!”
Last month, the Daily Mail alleged that Nigella and Paul were “not really getting on too well” behind the scenes of Bake Off, claiming that the former was finding the latter’s somewhat ostentatious conduct “rather cringe”.
Reps for Channel 4 and Paul Hollywood did not respond to HuffPost UK’s request for comment at the time, while Nigella’s team declined to comment.
Two health factors could play an important part in keeping cognitive decline at bay as you age.
New research from the University of Texas at San Antonio found physical activity and controlling blood sugar in midlife were linked to a “significantly slower rate of cognitive decline” later in life.
This adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that modifiable risk factors contribute substantially to cognitive decline and dementia.
What exactly did the new study find?
A total of 402 people were followed for the study – 52% were Hispanic and the rest were non-Hispanic white older adults, mostly in their late 50s.
Each participant was assessed using LS7 scores, a metric of cardiovascular health. The framework included three behavioural factors (healthy diet, non-smoking and physical activity) and four health factors (blood pressure, body mass index, total cholesterol and fasting blood glucose).
Researchers measured cognition up to four times using the Mini-Mental State Examination, an accepted 11-question screening test used to check memory, attention and thinking skills.
They then adjusted for age, sex, income and education to relate heart health factors to brain changes.
There were two key findings
Researchers found any physical activity was linked to slower cognitive decline in older Hispanic adults. The results are published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Behavior & Socioeconomics of Aging.
Another significant factor was fasting glucose levels (the amount of sugar in the bloodstream after an eight- to 12-hour fast). The study’s authors said lower blood sugar readings were associated with slower cognitive decline among non-Hispanic white adults.
“Our findings suggest that engaging in any level of physical activity and potentially maintaining optimal fasting blood glucose levels in midlife are associated with a significantly slower rate of cognitive decline in late life,” said Janette Vazquez, first author of the study and a senior postdoctoral research fellow at the Glenn Biggs Institute, UT Health San Antonio.
As the results differed by ethnicity, further research is needed to explore whether these differences occur in larger samples, the authors said.
The best exercises to prevent cognitive decline
Aerobic exercise in particular has been linked to a reduced risk of dementia.
According to the Alzheimer’s Society, aerobic activities worth considering include: brisk walking, swimming, water aerobics, hiking, dancing, cycling, tennis, gardening (ie. pushing a lawnmower) and decorating.
How to keep blood sugar levels under control
Other studies have also found a link between higher blood sugar levels and an increased risk of dementia – even in those who aren’t diabetic.
Blurred vision, increased thirst, frequent peeing (especially at night), unexpected weight loss and recurring infections like thrush can all be signs of underlying high blood sugar.
Per Dr Sonya Khan, of healthcare provider UT MD Anderson, the issue can be caused by a range of factors including diabetes, eating too many refined carbohydrates and processed foods, some cancer therapies, infections, extreme stress and severe pain.
Here are some ways to keep your blood sugar under control as you age:
- Manage diabetes if you have it.
- Avoid eating too much sugary or starchy food and instead opt for more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.
- Drink more water. “When your blood sugar is high, your kidneys filter out the excess sugar through urine,” said Dr Khan. “Making sure you’re adequately hydrated helps support this filtration process.”
- Manage stress.
- Exercise regularly.
Just when you thought the discussion about Jason Arday’s death couldn’t get anymore ghoulish, here come the ‘lynching’ wailers. This was a lynching carried out by a media industry drunk on racial hatred, they say. In this historically illiterate morality tale, Arday is the innocent black man and the reporters who queried his CV are his hooded killers. ‘The media lynched Jason Arday’, says Ibram X Kendi. Rarely has the soul-sucking relativism of wokeness been on such stark, sick display.
I have long been sceptical of the bourgeois misanthropy that dresses itself up as ‘anti-racism’. Yet even I am shocked by this hijacking of the bloody legacy of racial terror to score cheap moral points in 2026. Even I am astounded at the use and abuse of real anti-black terror as cheap fuel for modern grievance culture. I understand everyone craves clicks, but to liken the entirely legitimate questioning of a black professor’s claims with the dragging of a black innocent to a tree to be hanged for the delectation of a baying mob – this is truly beyond the pale.
Kendi was first out of the gates of shamelessness. He’s the African-American author of How To Be An Antiracist who achieved global fame in 2020 as the ideological feeder of rich whites consumed by historical self-loathing. If you are a ‘prominent black scholar’, they will ‘hunt you like a lynch mob’, he wrote. And that’s what they did to Arday. The ‘white-owned, mainstream media’ circled round him like vultures, ‘[piling] on and on and on and on’.
And they killed him. They lynched him. Of course they will never admit their part in this racial murder – ‘if you die from all the attacks, the media still calls the attacks on you “accusations” to wash their hands of the blood’, says Kendi. And that’s the sickest thing about these neo-lynchings, he says – ‘your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching’. Thus all those headlines saying ‘Jason Arday found dead’, written by white scum who were as responsible for his demise as were those Klansmen who weaved the noose around the necks of their black quarry.
Kendi is not alone in marshalling past horrors as a kind of exclamation mark to his own privileged rage in the present. This was a ‘culture-war lynching’, said Black Lives Matter UK of Arday’s death. Columnist Karen Attiah, until recently of the Washington Post, called his demise a ‘death by media mob’ that brings to mind ‘the old machinery of anti-black terror’. In real time, on the digital highway rather than an Alabama dirt track, ‘Jason Arday was being lynched’, said British academic Kehinde Andrews.
Where to begin with such self-serving moral hyperbole? The first and saddest point to make is that only one person bears responsibility for Jason Arday’s death, and that is Jason Arday. He and he alone was the author of his untimely demise. To call his death murder, far less a lynching, is a crime against truth. It robs Arday himself of moral agency. There is inverted racial bigotry here, the presumption being that a black man could not possibly have authored his own destruction. No, those all-powerful whites, that ‘white supremacy in academic drag’, must be the true architects of his ruin. I don’t know what we should call such black infantilisation and white demonisation, but I know it’s not ‘anti-racism’.
Then there’s the patrician washing away of Arday’s own moral wrongs. In depicting him as an unblemished innocent, hounded by vindictive whites, his posthumous defenders strip his life of its complexities. The truth is that Arday was a man who made very bad choices. He appears to have plagiarised the work of others and to have engaged in giddy fabulism to make his life appear tougher and more fascinating than it was. To scrub such truths from the record is not ‘pro-black’ – it is a nauseating crusade of condescension that reduces blacks to blameless entities undeserving of the scrutiny that other ‘races’ receive.
To liken a suicide to a lynching is to fully abandon truth, meaning and moral intention. If you cannot see the difference between those bedraggled black men dragged against their will to the hanging tree and a privileged black man choosing to end his own life, then you are beyond help. Argument – words themselves – will not rescue you from the cesspit of cultural relativism in which you have chosen to make your moral home.
For me (perhaps because I’m white – forgive me – and I wrote critically about Arday), the grossest thing in the ‘lynching’ lie is the implicit suggestion that reportage is murder. That digging for the truth is a potential death sentence for the vulnerable. That saying untoward things about a professor who happens to be black is by definition racist, and possibly even KKK in its consequences. This is a grotesque slander against journalists whose only intention was to uncover the truth about Arday and the powerful institutions that employed and flattered him.
To call these people ‘lynchers’ is repulsive beyond belief. Every journalist I know who queried Arday’s rise to professorial power was motored by a thirst for truth. Skin colour was immaterial to them. They only wanted to know whether Arday had been honest, and what it says about Cambridge, the BBC and the other institutions that fell at his feet that not one of them asked that simple question. Calling journalism murderous, equating the asking of questions with the prepping of nooses, is tyrannical. It is right out of the Stalinist playbook to accuse dissenting scribes of endangering life with their pesky, lowlife questions. ‘Shut up or people will die’ – that’s what the lynching hysterics are saying.
It is their destruction of truth that truly jars. To call the self-authored death of Arday a ‘lynching’ is an appalling act of historical desecration. A lynching is not a literary device. It is not a shrill synonym for perfectly normal journalistic scrutiny. A lynching is the real, brutal robbing of a life. To jealously snatch that word and stretch it so thinly over a modern media firestorm is an insult to every black man who was dragged from his bed. What a testament to the suffocating self-pity of the woke that they see media inquiries as tantamount to extrajudicial execution. Their vanity is the enemy of history.
Donald Trump and the White House’s weekend boasts to reporters about the lowering of prescription medication prices somewhat backfired.
He encouraged photographers to snap images of him proudly holding up the story, making sure they got the shot.
“And I told you that was going to happen,” Trump bragged, before moving onto hyping other positive headlines about himself.
However, there was one problem.
As The Guardian pointed out, The Post’s article stated that although “the White House took credit for the good news,” it also actually noted further down in the story how “some experts said a Biden-era policy that requires Medicare to negotiate prices for some popular prescription drugs is more likely to be driving down costs,” and went on to cite those experts.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Pirates Of The Caribbean producer Jerry Bruckheimer has claimed that he is currently in negotiations with Johnny Depp to get him to return to the franchise.
Over the weekend, Bruckheimer appeared at Disney’s annual D23 fan event, where updates are given about the company’s films, theme parks and other major projects.
During the event, Pirates Of The Caribbean’s lead producer confirmed to Deadline that he was “talking with Johnny” about getting him to play the role of Captain Jack Sparrow again.
“We’re working on a screenplay, and hopefully we can get this done,” he added.
HuffPost UK has contacted Johnny Depp’s team for comment.
Last year, Bruckheimer made similar claims, telling Entertainment Weekly that he’d been in contact with Depp about coming back as Jack Sparrow.
“If he likes the way the part’s written, I think he would do it,” he said, adding: “It’s a reboot, but if it was up to me, he would be in it. I love him. He’s a good friend.”
“He created Captain Jack,” Bruckheimer added at the time. “That was not on the page; that was him doing a little Pepé Le Pew and Keith Richards. That was his interpretation of Jack Sparrow.”
It should be noted, though, that after testifying in his infamous 2022 court case, Depp insisted he would not even accept an offer of “$300 million and a million alpacas” to reprise his role in a future Pirates Of The Caribbean film, after claiming Disney had dropped him from the franchise years earlier.
Depp has been a controversial figure ever since 2016, when his ex-wife Amber Heard alleged during their divorce proceedings that he had been abusive towards her in their marriage, which he denied at the time.
The two later reached a settlement and issued a joint statement, which read: “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.”
In 2019, Depp took legal action against Heard, accusing her of defamation after she penned an opinion piece claiming that she had been a victim of domestic abuse, without mentioning anyone, including her famous ex-husband, by name.
After a very public court battle, a jury eventually found in 2022 that Heard had defamed Depp with the statements in her opinion piece.
Two years before that, Depp had also sued the publishers of The Sun newspaper over a piece describing him as a “wife-beater”.
However, the UK’s High Court Of Justice eventually ruled that the “great majority” of Heard’s allegations of abuse could be proven to the civil standard, and as a result The Sun’s description was “substantially true”.
Depp appealed this verdict, but the request was eventually denied.
While he has been largely out of the spotlight in recent history, he is due to take the lead in Ti West’s A Christmas Carol reimagining Ebeneezer later this year, co-starring Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough, Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint, Emmy winner Tramell Tillman and acting legend Sir Ian McKellen.
President Donald Trump shared an oddly lyrical prediction about the future of “the woke” on Friday.
Fox News’ Alexis McAdams and the president were discussing a viral interview in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York) joked about political discourse in the early 2020s. In it, the progressive lawmaker quoted New York City council member Chi Ossé’s quip that “Woke 1 was crazy.”
On Friday, Trump characterised Ocasio-Cortez’s comments as an example of Democrats trying to “disavow” previously held opinions on issues like crime.
McAdams asked, “Democrats are trying to back away from those woke thoughts before the midterms. How can you remind people of that?”
“They’re going to be reminded anyway, and you don’t have to remember too much,” Trump replied. “You know, you’re talking about elections that if you win by 10%, it’s supposed to be a landslide, right? So you don’t have to remember too much.”
That’s when he delivered his wokeness prophecy.
“People know the woke,” he said. “I mean, they know the woke. And the woke will become woke again, as soon as they get elected.”
Watch McAdams’ interview with Trump below:
Though Ocasio-Cortez distanced herself from some of the “rhetoric” of the COVID-19 pandemic-era, she added that many of the period’s conversations around social issues like crime were “quite fruitful.”
“I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way we talked about crime, and bringing crime down, right?” she said. “And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think, that, you know, during lockdown of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
When asked if Ocasio-Cortez was going to run for president, Trump had a swift answer.
“I think so,” he said.
4 min read
The PM must step in to help the next generation of artists.
As a keen music fan, our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, will know that the UK music industry faces major challenges. He will be well aware of the immense pressure on venues, studios and music businesses due to rising costs and the barriers that musicians and crew still face when trying to tour post-Brexit.
The PM acted swiftly in his first few days in No 10 by moving to cut business rates for music venues from next April. This is a welcome boost for this crucial sector, which supports 220,000 jobs and generates £8bn for the UK economy and £4.8 bbn in export revenues each year.
There is another issue that poses a very real threat to the UK’s music sector and wider creative industries that requires the urgent attention of Burnham and his team: artificial intelligence and copyright.
A cornerstone of our creative sectors’ current success is the effectiveness of the UK’s system of copyright and licensing arrangements. In a nutshell, these rules ensure creators get paid for what they do, and enable them to carry on producing the creative content loved by millions not just here in the UK, but across the world.
However, the protections afforded by copyright are now under threat. The widespread, unlicensed use of creative content for AI training by tech giants – most of which are based across the Atlantic – is hugely impacting the ability of our musicians, songwriters and performers to make a living.
Creators are losing meaningful control over the commercial exploitation of their works and identities, while a flood of AI-generated content in the market is replacing human-made work and undercutting paid commissions. Left unchecked, this issue poses a clear danger to individuals and businesses across our entire £125bn creative industries.
The government has said that the creative industries are one of the key pillars of the UK’s future economic growth. If it thinks that, it should act on it. It must now find workable solutions to the undoubted challenges that AI presents to their ability to survive and thrive.
The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, which I chair, outlined some of these solutions in a report we published in March. I would urge Burnham to look at our conclusions if he is determined to ensure we get the next generation of iconic bands he cherishes, such as Oasis, The Smiths, The Stone Roses and Wolf Alice.
Our cross-party group made it clear that the government faces a stark choice. The UK can either become a world-leading base for responsible AI development, underpinned by licensing and fair remuneration, or drift towards accepting large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content and seeing US-based AI firms profit, while harms to UK creators grow.
One early decision we would like to see is a move to firmly rule out adding a broad new commercial text and data mining (TDM) exception to UK copyright law. If such an exception is allowed, it would effectively give AI firms free rein to use the work of music creators and others without payment or permission. It would weaken the UK’s copyright law, exacerbate existing harms to rightsholders and stall the emerging licensing market.
To safeguard creators’ livelihoods while supporting sustainable AI growth, the government must develop a system that ensures licensing of copyrighted content is the top priority. This must be underpinned by a mandatory transparency framework for AI developers, so rightsholders know whether and how their work has been used to train AI models. They should also consider how public procurement could help foster compliance by international AI firms when it comes to transparency.
We also need to see creators’ rights strengthened through the introduction of protections against unauthorised digital replicas. These must give creators and performers meaningful control over how their identities are used commercially. A robust policy and effective technical standards for labelling of AI-generated material should also be prioritised, so music fans and others can easily see when work has been created by AI.
We all want to see our music sector, our creative industries and our wider economy grow. A key way of doing that is by ensuring we create the conditions for a fair and inclusive UK licensing market for AI training. The government should now take the necessary steps to help this market grow in a way that works for rightsholders and AI developers.
The UK has a gold-standard copyright regime. In the age of AI, the government must protect, not weaken, it so that our music and creative industries can continue to flourish for decades to come.
Baroness Keeley is Chair of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee
Ariana Grande had a surprise in store for her fans in London on Sunday night.
Over the weekend, the Grammy winner kicked off the final run of shows on her Eternal Sunshine world tour, with the first of 10 dates at the iconic O2 Arena.
Towards the end of her second show on Sunday evening, Ariana brought out her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo for a stunning live performance.
During the encores, the Oscar-nominated co-stars gave a rendition of the Wicked: For Good ballad, For Good, before delivering a show-stopping performance of Get Happy and Happy Days Are Here Again, popularised by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand in the early 1960s.
As you’d expect, the impromptu performance went down a storm at the venue, as well as on social media.
The pair previously went viral with their version of Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again when they performed it during the TV special Wicked: One Wonderful Night last year.
Ariana now has eight shows left at The O2 before the Eternal Sunshine tour comes to an end on Tuesday 1 September.
The Grammy winner had previously indicated that her Eternal Sunshine shows would be her last time performing live for the foreseeable future, saying during an interview on the podcast Good Hang last year: “I’m very excited to do this small tour, but I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long time. So I’m going to give it my all.”
More recently, her spokesperson told People magazine: “Ariana will be taking a step back from visibility after she completes the Eternal Sunshine Tour.
“She looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny.”
They added: “This tour has been a beautiful experience for her. She loves her fans and has loved every minute of this tour so much.”
Ariana had been due to appear in a London revival of the musical Sunday In The Park With George next year, which would have reunited her with Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey, though she has now withdrawn from the production.
Hollywood is in mourning following the sudden loss of Hayden Panettiere at the age of 36.
On Sunday evening, Hayden’s family confirmed that the former child actor had died, with her father Skip remembering her as an “incredible light and a force of nature”, who not only brought “immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her” but also “to the millions who watched her on screen”.
Although she was still just 36 at the time of her death, Hayden’s career spanned more than 30 years, after getting her start in the entertainment industry at the age of just five, appearing in hugely popular TV shows and films throughout her time in the spotlight, including numerous big-name franchises.
To remember Hayden and her legacy, we’re looking back at some of the biggest roles she played over the course of her lifetime…
One Life To Live (1994)
Ann Limongello Disney General Entertainment Con
Hayden was just five years old when she landed the role that would change her life as Sarah Roberts in the US daytime soap One Life To Live.
She appeared in 26 episodes of the serial between 1994 and 1997, after which the character would later be played by Shanelle Workman and Justis Bolding.
Guiding Light (1996)
After two years playing Sarah Roberts, Hayden made the jump to another US soap, Guiding Light.
She played Lizzie Spaulding for around four years, during which time the show was honoured with a Special Recognition Award by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for raising awareness of the disease thanks to Hayden’s portrayal of a young girl receiving cancer treatment.
A Bug’s Life (1998)
The same year she made her debut with a small role in the Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd rom-com The Object Of My Affection, Hayden also lent her voice to the Pixar movie A Bug’s Life.
She played the young ant Dot, the daughter of Phyllis Diller’s Queen and sister of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Princess Atta, in one of several projects she’d appear in for Disney, which also included the CGI animation Dinosaur and the live-action film Tiger Cruise.
Kingdom Hearts (2002)
Another hugely popular project Hayden appeared in for Disney wasn’t a TV series or a movie, but the video game Kingdom Hearts, a crossover between Final Fantasy and the House Of Mouse’s most popular franchises.
In the first two English dubs of Kingdom Hearts, Hayden lent her voice to the character Kairi, reprising the role numerous times over the years, as well as the mysterious Xion.
Ally McBeal (2002)
In the fifth and final season of the legal dramedy Ally McBeal, Hayden made her debut as Maddie Harrington, the main character’s biological daughter.
Maddie, it soon emerged, was conceived after a mix-up at a fertility clinic where Calista Flockhart’s titular lawyer had frozen her eggs years earlier.
Malcolm In The Middle (2003)
Throughout the dysfunctional and chaotic family comedy Malcolm In The Middle, Jessica made numerous appearances as the recurring character Jessica.
Initially introduced as a manipulative and devious babysitter to the boys, who are resentful towards her because she’s Malcolm’s age. However, as her story arc progresses, we learn more about the character, and she even grows protective towards Malcolm, and emerges as a potential love interest for him.
Heroes (2006)
NBC/Universal Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock
Hayden’s breakthrough moment came when she was cast as Claire Bennet, a high school cheerleader with special abilities, in the supernatural drama Heroes.
Its initial run, which also co-starred Milo Ventimiglia, Zachary Quinto and Kristen Bell, ran for 77 episodes, centring around a group of unlikely superheroes who are united only by their wide-ranging powers.
Amanda Knox: Murder On Trial In Italy (2011)
One of several collaborations between Hayden and the US broadcaster Lifetime came in 2011, when she took the lead in the true crime drama Amanda Knox: Murder On Trial In Italy.
Taking on the lead role of Amanda Knox, convicted and later acquitted for the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, the cast also included Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden and British actor Vincent Riotta.
Scream 4 (2011)
Dimension Films/Kobal/Shutterstock
To fans of the slasher genre, Hayden will be best remembered for her work as the dry-humoured horror fanatic Kirby Reed in Scream 4, who becomes a target of Ghostface when the Woodsboro murders begin to be recreated.
After a voice-only appearance in the fifth instalment, Hayden returned to the franchise in 2023, where her character was revealed to have taken up a new role as FBI agent following her traumatic experiences years earlier.
Nashville (2012)
Walk Chew Gum/Kobal/Shutterstock
For her work in the musical series Nashville, Hayden took the lead as aspiring country star Juliette Barnes, a role that required her to show off her singing prowess as well as her acting.
Playing the up-and-coming rival to Connie Britton’s more established character Rayna Jaymes, Hayden appeared in all six seasons of Nashville, contributing vocals to all of its accompanying soundtrack albums, before it came to an end in 2018. During her time on the show, she was nominated for two Golden Globes.
Custody (2016)
Paul Sarkis/Lucky Monkey/Kobal/Shutterstock
In the courtroom drama Custody, Hayden played a defence lawyer tasked with defending a woman whose children have been taken away from her after an incident at their home.
Overseeing everything was screen icon Viola Davis as a judge, with the cast also including Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno, Emmy nominee Karen Pittman and Oscar-winning screen veteran Ellen Burstyn.
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