Hayden Panettiere, who rose from child actress to television icon and later chronicled her hard-won sobriety in print, died Sunday at 36, leaving behind a career that touched millions and a daughter, now 11, already living an ocean away. Her family has asked for privacy in the face of what her father called an unimaginable loss. Her death arrives just months after she published a memoir that read, in retrospect, as both a reckoning and a farewell — a life examined with unusual honesty, cut short before its next chapter could be written.
Hayden Panettiere, 'Heroes' and 'Nashville' star, dead at 36
Panettiere's death leaves her 11-year-old daughter Kaya orphaned; the child has been separated from her mother since 2018 during her addiction treatment.