Hayden Lesley Panettiere

Hayden Lesley Panettiere 

Panettiere began her acting career in 1994 at just four years old, and has since starred in some movies and TV shows we still love today. This includes voicing Princess Dot in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998), playing Sheryl Yoast in Remember the Titans (2000), along with playing Claire Bennet in Heroes (2006-10) and Juliette Barnes in Nashville (2012-18). . For her role on the Pixar film A Bug's Life (1998), she was nominated for a Young Artist Award and a Grammy Award, making her the fifth-youngest nominee for a Grammy.

But as her career flourished, Panettiere was privately battling addiction — a struggle she would later detail publicly. She said her drinking began to spiral after she moved to Tennessee to film “Nashville” in 2012 and worsened following the 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya, when she also battled postpartum depression. Despite those struggles, Panettiere returned to acting after a roughly four-year hiatus, reprising her role as Kirby Reed in 2023’s “Scream VI.” She followed that comeback with the 2024 thriller “Amber Alert,” 2025’s “A Breed Apart” and the psychological thriller “Sleepwalker,” released in January 2026.

Panettiere died on August 16, 2026, aged 36, her representative confirmed to ABC News.

No cause of death has been given.