Hayden Panettiere Recently Spoke About Child-Star Pressure, Struggles With Postpartum Depression and Addiction

Just three months before her shocking death Sunday at the age of 36, Hayden Panettiere made headlines for her candid revelations about her struggles growing up in the entertainment industry.

Panettiere’s memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning that released in May saw her reflecting on everything from the pressure she felt as a child actress to body dysmorphia stemming from paparazzi photos of her as a teenager and disturbing encounters with powerful entertainment industry figures; to her struggles with postpartum depression and substance abuse, as well as losing custody of her daughter Kaya and the death of her younger brother in 2023.

Speaking toThe Hollywood Reporter at the time to promote her book, Panettiere recalled her past as a child actor in which she felt pressure to do as she was told and succeed.

“I was groomed. I was like a little soldier and I always have been,” she said. “No was never an option. It was just: Here are your scenes, here’s your dialogue, memorize it, hit the marks, do what your director tells you to do. I took my marching orders.”

Panettiere said in the memoir that her mother got her into modeling and took her to auditions, pushing her to succeed as she began starring in commercials as a baby and appearing in roughly 50 by the time she turned 5.

“You always want to think the best of your parents and see them in the brightest light,” she told The New York Times in May tied to the memoir’s publication. “But there were a lot of things done with an approach that was not about my mental health or what was emotionally or mentally safe for me to do. That’s a tough realization.”

She also told the Times that neither of her parents had read the book and told multiple outlets that delving into her childhood and her relationship with her mother was difficult.

“Having to touch on everything about my relationship with my mother, that was one of the harder things to talk about,” Panettiere told THR about her memoir. “While writing it, I realized even more so how much of a toll it took on me.”

Panettiere added that she was worried about rehashing her traumatic past during the book’s press tour, which included interviews with THR, the Times, CBS Mornings, The View and Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, the latter getting renewed attention after her death.

“One of the things that I was most terrified about, when deciding whether or not to write this book, was that I knew what was going to come along with it,” she said of promoting the memoir. “I had to sit with myself and make a decision, and I realized it was more important for me to share my stories and to wipe the slate clean.”

Reflecting on her obedient past as a child actor, Panettiere told THR that that pressure ultimately took a toll on her.

“I would push myself to do whatever they wanted on set, but it was too much for any one person,” she said.

She ended up “self-harming in the form of substance abuse,” Panettiere said.

“My people-pleasing had built up and up, it was anger and anxiety and frustration,” she said. “My life revolved around other people, and I lived to make other people happy and I was the last one on the list. The pressure of that built and built and just exploded. I started figuring out any way I could get through it. Sometimes they’ll say in treatment that, believe it or not, our addictions probably saved us at a certain point.”

As she grew up in Hollywood, Panettiere saw her appearance scrutinized when she was a teenager.
After tabloids ran photos of her as a teen calling out cellulite in her thighs, Panettiere said she began suffering from body dysmorphia.

“It blows my mind that people could be so cruel,” she told the Times in May. “Looking back as an adult and a mother of a daughter, it’s hard to believe that grown adults were OK with ripping you apart at such a tender age. At any age, really.”

She also reveals in the book, where she came out as bisexual, that an Oscar-winning actor and director exposed himself to her at a party and that, when she was 18, a trusted friend forced her into bed with a “famous British singer-songwriter” before she ran out of the room in shock.

After she gave birth to her daughter, she struggled with postpartum depression and turned to alcohol and opioids.

“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,” Panettiere said on Shetty’s podcast. “That’s why I turned to substances — because the anxiety that I started having, the panic attacks that I started having,”

She added, recalling how she’d long wanted to be a mom: “I had this beautiful plan in my head, and then I had my daughter, and I knew something was just terribly, terribly wrong. I was miserable. I was in tears all the time. Even though the alcohol helped my nervous system calm down, it is a depressant, so over time it made things worse, not better.”

Panettiere was starring in the ABC drama Nashville when she when she was dealing with postpartum depression and alcoholism, issues her character was also dealing with. Panettiere said that the writers and producers of the series used her experiences to inform her character’s storylines.

While she left the series during its fourth season in 2015 to go to a treatment facility for depression, she returned several months later and stayed with the show until its end in 2018.

The book also saw Panettiere reflect on her painful decision to give up custody of Kaya to ex Wladimir Klitschko. Kaya now lives with her father in Ukraine, where Panettiere told Shetty, she’s been building a “beautiful life.”

“I did not have a good reaction to it. I went like ‘mother lion.’ I would have burnt the world down for my child,” Panettiere told Shetty about giving up custody.

“The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking,” she added. “It couldn’t be further from the truth. It became this horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse, and just me trying to find my way back.”

She told Shetty she’d formed a strong bond with Kaya and remained hopeful they’d reunite: “I have faith that she is going to come to me and that we’re going to have an incredible relationship and bond and friendship that a lot of parents don’t get to have with their kids.”

Writing about her brother Jansen Panettiere’s death was particularly difficult, Hayden Panettiere recalled.

“It’s still a subject where I’m moments from bursting into tears any time I try to talk about it,” she told THR. “Time can be a great healer, but in this case, my grief just seems to evolve. It’s something I’ll never get over.”

Reflecting on his death to Shetty recently, Panettiere said, “There was nothing in my life that feels like losing my other half. We were so close, and being the older sibling – who it’s your job to protect them and keep them safe – and not being able to, heartbreaking doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Promoting her book, Panettiere was hopeful about a next chapter in her career.

She said that she was interested in producing, directing and doing action or comedy, adding to the Times that she might create a jewelry or makeup line or start a lifestyle brand.

She said she had a “laundry list of aspirations.”

And she told THR that she hadn’t yet played a role or made a business decision where her career was hers.

“I don’t think anybody has seen it yet fully. It’s to come; it’s still something I’m working on.”

And speaking to the Times, Panettiere offered this bittersweet reflection on her past: “I just can’t believe I made it through alive.”

Her last post on Instagram shows Panettiere enjoying a happy moment, captioning a black-and-white picture of herself with director, podcaster and photographer Randall Slavin, with “Good times and good friends.”

On Sunday at around 1:50 p.m., Panettiere was found unresponsive inside a residence in Greenville, South Caroline. Officials reportedly heard on the 911 audio call were reportedly discussing an “overdose” and “cardiac arrest” around the time of Panettiere’s death.

Police said the case is under investigation by the Greenville Police Department in conjunction with the Greenville County Coroner’s Office and that “the preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.” An “acquaintance” of Panettiere’s placed the 911 call.