Inside Hayden Panettiere
Hayden Panettiere has sadly died at the age of 36 as tributes have continued to pour in for the beloved actress. According to TMZ, the actress was found dead by a friend inside a South Carolina home after emergency services responded to a call for a person in "cardiac arrest". She is survived by her 11-year-old daughter Kaya Evdokia Klitschko who she shares with ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko. EMS workers reportedly attempted to resuscitate Hayden, but she was pronounced dead at 2.32pm. A representative confirmed her death on Sunday, saying she brought "immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her".
A statement from her father Skip Panettiere said: "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen."
He also asked that her family be given privacy as they "take time to process this unimaginable loss."
Express.co.uk takes an inside look into Hayden's life from on-screen star, devastating loss to tragic final last words in candid interview.
Hayden, born in New York in 1989, first hit the screens as an 11-month-old baby when her mum took her to star in several TV commercials. Her first acting gig came when she was only four years old on the American soap opera One Life to Live. She would continue to remain in the film and TV industry throughout her life.
Her film debut came at the age of nine, as the narrator and voice of Princess Dot in the 1998 animated Pixar flick A Bug’s Life. She then featured in Remember the Titans alongside Denzel Washington in 2000.
"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."
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She worked on several other major films including Racing Stripes and Scream VI. The actress starred in 73 episodes of Emmy-award winning Heroes between 2006 to 2010 as cheerleader Claire Bennet.
Hayden later earned two Golden Globe nominations as Juliette Barnes on Nashville where she featured in 128 episodes from 2012 to 2018.
She was nominated for a Young Artist Award and a Grammy Award on the back of the film’s box office success, which made her the fifth-youngest Grammy nominee ever.
She also starred in 2006 cheerleading comedy Bring It On: All or Nothing, the third instalment in the Bring It On film series.
The Heroes and Nashville actress shared daughter Kaya with former fiancé Wladimir Klitschko who they welcomed in 2014. She candidly shared her struggles with postpartum depression and addiction after the birth of her daughter in her May 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, and during an appearance that same month on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast.
She made the difficult decision to give full custody of Kaya to her ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko in 2018. Despite living apart, Hayden maintained a strong bond with Kaya and spoke proudly of her daughter’s accomplishments.
Despite the pair living apart for years, the late actress said in her memoir that her bond with her daughter remained "incredibly strong".
“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’ve felt because of it,” she wrote.
“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), and although I miss Kaya so much my heart aches, I know how blessed I am to be her mom,” she continued. “She is the greatest gift of my life, with all the best parts of her father and me.”
Hayden 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."
With both parties travelling for work and Klitschko often based in Ukraine, the long distance ended up playing a role in the couple splitting in 2011, only to rekindle things two years later. They got engaged in October 2013, with Hayden welcoming their daughter a year later. The couple split years later but chose to co-parent. Kaya resides in Europe with her dad.