Hayden Panettiere passes away days before her 37th birthday

This weekend we lost actress, Hayden Panettiere. She was just 36 years old — days away from her 37th birthday.

Hayden was found unresponsive by a friend at a home in Greenville, South Carolina, on Sunday afternoon. First responders performed advanced life support, but she was pronounced dead at 2:32 p.m. An autopsy found no signs of trauma. Her official cause of death is still pending, but 911 dispatch audio referenced cardiac arrest and a possible overdose.

Hayden was a child star before she could even walk — modeling at five months old, soap operas by kindergarten. She was the little girl in “Remember the Titans.” She voiced a character in “A Bug’s Life.” But for me, it was “Heroes.” She played Claire Bennet — the indestructible cheerleader — and she was everything.

“Save the cheerleader, save the world.” That was appointment television in my house.

Then came “Nashville,” where she played Juliette Barnes and earned two Golden Globe nominations. She could act. She could sing. She had that thing you can’t fake.

But behind all of that, Hayden was struggling.

After her daughter Kaya was born in 2014 — with heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko — Hayden was hit hard with postpartum depression. She’s talked openly about how the anxiety became unbearable, and that’s when she turned to substances just to survive the day. She and Klitschko eventually split, and he had full custody of their daughter.

Hayden then ended up in a relationship with a man named Brian Hickerson. What followed was heartbreaking — domestic violence arrests, police being called, the kind of chaos that everyone on the outside could see was dangerous. It played out publicly, and all any of us could do was watch and hope someone close to her was stepping in.

Her little brother Jansen died suddenly in 2023 at just 28 years old from an enlarged heart. Hayden said publicly that she would “never get over losing him.”

But she kept fighting. She came back to acting with “Scream VI.” and she was great in it.  She was a fan favorite in whatever she was acting in.

She released a memoir this past May called, “This Is Me: A Reckoning” — raw, honest, holding nothing back. She sat down with Jay Shetty. She went on CBS and talked about postpartum depression, addiction and her daughter.

Viola Davis said she saw “a beautiful Phoenix rising from the ashes.”

And that’s what makes this so gut-wrenching. She was doing the work. She was telling her story. We were all watching her rise. I wanted her to win.

Read more about Hayden Panatierre and her life here.