What Hayden Panettiere Said About Addiction & Postpartum Depression

Hayden Panettiere Suffered Apparent Overdose, Cardiac Arrest Before Being Found Unresponsive

In Heroes, Hayden Panettiere’s character Claire Bennet had the power of rapid healing. But in real life, the actress knew the journey was not that simple.   

"I never want to stop evolving and changing for the better, and I’ll forever be a work in progress," she wrote in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, released this past May, "but one thing I know from my 36 years in the public eye is this: Life is a process that evolves day by day, year by year—and like it or not—you are engaged in a cycle of growth until the moment you take your last breath."

Panettiere died in Greenville, South Carolina, on Aug. 16, just days before her 37th birthday. After receiving a 911 call at around 1:51 p.m., first responders and emergency medical services arrived at a residence and found a female in cardiac arrest, according to a release from the Greenville County Coroner’s Office. While "EMS personnel initiated advanced cardiac life support measures," the release continued, "resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful, and the individual was pronounced deceased at 2:32 p.m." The individual was later identified as Panettiere.

Afterwards, the Greenville County Coroner’s Office responded to the residence, which it noted was where Panettiere had been temporarily staying.

"An autopsy was completed today,” the coroner's office added in its Aug. 17 statement. “At autopsy no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death. The cause and manner of death remain pending further investigation and the completion of additional studies. This investigation remains active and ongoing."

Acting and modeling since she was a baby, Panettiere grew up in front of the cameras—appearing in One Life to Live, Guiding Light, A Bug’s Life and Remember the Titans as a kid and starring in Bring It On: All or Nothing, Heroes, I Love You, Beth Cooper and Nashville in her teens and 20s. However, fans didn’t always know the challenges she faced behind the cameras, including her battles with anxiety and addiction.

In her memoir, Panettiere recalled how a former rep gave her a "happy pill"—which she later suspected was "some sort of amphetamine"—when she was a teenager before red carpet events.

"At 16, they were the gateway drug that ushered toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction," she wrote. "They showed me how drugs can change your brain for better or for worse. They opened up my world, but years later, they’d forever change it as well."

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In 2013, Panettiere got engaged to Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, and they welcomed daughter Kaya the following year—with Panettiere experiencing complications during the now-11-year-old's birth.

"I was sitting there getting the C-section, and I knew that I was knocking on death's doorstep," Hayden told E! News in May. "I just had the most motherly moment though, where I said, 'God, please let me hear my daughter cry. I just want to know that she is OK, and if it's my time to go, I'm OK with that.'"

After Kaya's arrival, Panettiere experienced postpartum depression—expressing how, at the time, she wasn't armed with the resources to guide her through that journey and turned to self-medicating.

"I never heard any stories about it at all," Panettiere told E! in 2023. "I just thought there was something seriously wrong with me. So, I thought, 'Fireball will fix this.'"

Over the next few years, Panettiere continued to struggle with addiction to alcohol and depression while navigating motherhood, the unraveling of her relationship with Klitschko and her lead role on Nashville, with her character Juliette going through many of the same challenges she was privately facing.

"It was me and the bottle,” she told People in 2022. "It was alcohol and it was opiates."

In 2018, Nashville ended and so did her relationship with Klitschko, with him getting custody of Kaya. That same year, she began an on-again, off-again relationship with boyfriend Brian Hickerson—who in 2021 was sentenced to 45 days in prison on two counts of injuring a partner following an altercation with Panettiere, to which he pleaded no contest.               

As Panettiere’s battle with addiction continued, she sought treatment in 2020.

"As my nervous system tried to regulate itself without the depressant effects of alcohol, it went into overdrive and my whole body shook, I couldn’t sleep, and my head pounded like it was pressing against my skull," she wrote in her memoir. "'At least my eyes aren’t yellow,' I told myself. I’d developed jaundice before, and a doctor told me if I didn’t stop drinking, I’d be dead in five years."

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Five years after Nashville's 2018 finale and Panettiere's break from acting, she returned to the screen to reprise her role as Kirby in 2023’s Scream VI. That same year, though, she experienced a devastating family tragedy as her brother and Tiger Cruise costar Jansen Panettiere died at age 28, with his family noting due to cardiomegaly and aortic valve complications.

In her book, Panettiere candidly detailed her heartache during this time—noting that, ahead of his death, her younger brother experimented with drugs.

As for her grief, "It evolves," she explained to E! News in May, "and especially with a sibling and being the older sibling, you’re just riddled with guilt that you didn’t do your job. And especially what took him was something that I of all people should’ve understood."

However, Panettiere hoped hearing about her heartbreaks and challenges would make others feel less alone.

"Radical acceptance has taught me to walk hand in hand with my triumphs and my tragedies because they’ve made me who I am," she wrote in her memoir. "And today, I really love that person."

To look back at her life in photos, keep reading.

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