On August 7, I turned 34. Birthdays have always made me reflective. During my new season, I take some time to think about where I am, where I thought I would be, what I’ve accomplished, what I still want, and how much of my childhood continues to influence the woman I’ve become. This year, though, turning 34 felt different. For the first time, I found myself really sitting with the fact that I am firmly in my mid-thirties, old enough to look backward with perspective and forward with a different understanding of time.
Then, nine days later, I woke up with a strange pang in my chest. I checked my phone and learned that Hayden Panettiere, one of my favorite child actresses and a driving force across film and television throughout the 2000s, had died at 36. Details are still emerging but early reports say that Panettiere passed away from a cardiac arrest, possibly due to an overdose, and that there was no evidence of foul play. She was only two years older than me, and for a moment, I couldn’t process it.
Panettiere wasn’t simply an actress I admired. She was part of my childhood. Like so many millennial girls who grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I watched her grow up on screen. I knew her from Remember the Titans, Ice Princess, Raising Helen, Bring It On: All or Nothing, Heroes and, later, Nashville. She was one of those young actors who seemed always to be there as we moved from childhood into adolescence and, eventually, adulthood. So, when the news of her death spread, it didn’t feel like the death of a celebrity I’d never met; it felt like the loss of someone I knew, like a childhood friend I’d lost touch with. I opened TikTok and watched montage after montage of the Golden Globe-nominated actress and mother, her death leaving most TikTokers in disbelief.
Many of the young performers who helped create [the millennial] cultural landscape never got the chance to grow old alongside us.
Panettiere was only 36; we grew up with her, and she was so young. This doesn’t feel real. Between pouring over those TikToks, I realized that my grief wasn’t only about her. Panettiere’s life and now her death force my generation to confront the entertainment industry that raised us. Because millennials are old enough to remember these stars as children and now see them as adults, we’re seeing the aftereffects of growing up in the industry, and that perspective changes everything.
We were too young to understand what it meant for a child to become a working actor. We saw the red carpets, the television shows, the magazine covers and the premieres. We saw talented young people seemingly living extraordinary lives. We didn’t see the pressure, the exploitation or the ways that childhood stardom could follow someone long after the cameras stopped rolling, and the pitfalls that come when the adults responsible for protecting them care more about money than their wellbeing.
And in Panettiere’s case, we didn’t understand how profoundly growing up inside Hollywood affected her until she began telling us herself. That’s when I started looking at child stardom differently. I remember growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s surrounded by a generous array of “kid-friendly” entertainment programming. Nickelodeon’s All That, Disney’s That’s So Raven, Glee, made-for-television movies like Life-Size, and so much more filled our screens. These programs gave us characters we loved, actors we admired, and stories that became part of the fabric of our childhoods.
But many of the young performers who helped create that cultural landscape never got the chance to grow old alongside us.
Some passed away before they made it to their 40th birthdays (Cory Monteith died from an accidental heroin overdose at 31). Others have openly navigated addiction (Lindsay Lohan has been open about her struggles with substance abuse), mental illness (Amanda Bynes’ mental health battles have been highly publicized), and the difficult realities of transitioning from childhood fame into adulthood.
That realization has become part of a larger millennial reckoning. Many of the child stars we grew up watching are no longer with us, like Michelle Trachtenberg, Brittany Murphy, Lee Thompson Young, and Aaron Carter. Their stories are not interchangeable, and Hollywood cannot be blamed for every tragedy. But collectively, they raise an uncomfortable question: What responsibility did the adults and institutions around these children have to protect them — and why did they so often fail?
In Panettiere’s case, the answer can be found in what she revealed about her childhood. In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere wrote that she was introduced to drugs at 15 when a member of her public relations team allegedly gave her “happy pills” before red carpets and interviews to keep her focused and energetic. In a recent interview on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast and in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere revealed how, at 19, she finally confronted her mother, Lesley Vogel, about their complicated relationship. While filming Heroes, Panettiere summoned the courage to end their professional relationship, telling her mother in her trailer during lunch, “I don’t want us to work together anymore. I just want you to be my mom.” Vogel cared more about the business than their relationship and told Panettiere that she “owed” her. Panettiere clearly didn’t receive the emotional support that a child is owed from her mother.
For the sake of our entertainment, these children sacrificed their freedom… and fell victim to opportunistic, preying adults. When children become commodities, who is responsible for protecting them from a system built to profit from them?
Panettiere also described the intense pressures of being raised in Hollywood from infancy and being managed and conditioned from a young age. That conditioning extended to encounters with powerful adults. Panettiere recalled in her memoir that an “important executive at NBC” kissed her on the lips at a party in 2008 while she was starring on Heroes. She also described an encounter at 19 in which an “Oscar-winning actor and director” allegedly cornered her and exposed himself.
One of the most disturbing incidents occurred when she was 18. According to Panettiere and her memoir, an actress friend took her to a yacht party in the South of France and ushered her into a cabin where a famous British singer-songwriter in his 30s lay naked in bed.
“I want you to get in bed with him,” the friend told her. Panettiere wrote that she panicked but had spent her life trusting the people managing her. “Being ‘managed’ was routine, to the point where I lost faith in my intuition,” she wrote.
Her account speaks to something larger than one disturbing encounter: for the sake of our entertainment, these children sacrificed their freedom, lost trust in their own instincts, and fell victim to opportunistic, preying adults. When children become commodities, who is responsible for protecting them from a system built to profit from them? Panettiere later spoke openly about addiction to opioids and alcohol and her battle with postpartum depression. In a 2022 PEOPLE interview, she said, “I was on top of the world, and I ruined it.”
That framing deserves reconsideration. Panettiere didn’t “ruin” her life; she was a young woman trying to survive circumstances she had been taught to normalize. She had to navigate fame and a relentless industry with no support or supervision. The only thing ruined was the sanctity, safety, and innocence of her childhood, which everyone has a right to.
What’s most heartbreaking is that recently, it seemed as if Panettiere was finally entering a new chapter. On the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, Panettiere said, “I finally feel like I have shaken off all of this darkness and this negativity.”
That makes her death even more devastating. She was rebuilding and reclaiming her story, while bravely speaking openly about what had happened to her. And now, she is gone. We cannot know whether different interventions would have changed the course of Panettiere’s life. Her story was complicated, and it would be reductive to suggest Hollywood alone caused everything she endured.
Millennials grew up watching Hayden Panettiere become a star, and unfortunately, now we are watching what that stardom cost her.
But we can acknowledge what the industry asked of Hayden Panettiere. It asked a child to become a professional before she was old enough to understand the power dynamics surrounding her. It asked her to perform, remain marketable and, at times, suppress her own instincts in service of a career adults were building around her.
And when that child became an adult struggling with the consequences, the conversation too often became about what was wrong with her.
In 2015, Panettiere openly spoke about her postpartum depression (PPD) and mental health struggles after giving birth to her daughter in 2014. That same year, she was dropped by cosmetics company Neutrogena after a 10-year partnership, a decision she believes was connected to her decision to speak publicly about her postpartum depression. Years later, in 2018, she made the painful decision to sign over full custody of her daughter to her then-partner, Wladimir Klitschko, so she could focus on recovering from severe postpartum depression and addiction.
“I wouldn’t take [speaking about PPD] back, but…of all the things that I had been caught doing, that being the thing where they drew the line was shocking to me,” Panettiere told Shetty. She added that it was “heartbreaking” that their 10-year partnership ended without anyone from the company reaching out to her.
Her problems became plotlines on Nashville. That is the part millennials should reckon with. We grew up consuming these stars’ childhoods without understanding the machinery behind them. Now we are old enough to look back and ask whether the adults were protecting the children — or protecting the machine.
When I turned 34 this year, I found myself thinking about time differently, how childhood moves quickly into adulthood, what I want in this next chapter, and about the people I grew up watching. But Panettiere didn’t get to see 37. Her story allows us to reconsider what we owe the next generation of young performers. A child should not have to become the breadwinner before the adults around them decide to protect them. And even then, the money often still doesn’t buy them the love, security, and support they deserve.
Millennials grew up watching Hayden Panettiere become a star, and unfortunately, now we are watching what that stardom cost her. Her struggles shouldn’t be the end of her story. Instead, her legacy should start a harder conversation about what Hollywood owes the children it turns into stars, and whether we are finally ready to demand better.
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