A Tribute to Hayden Panettiere

A Tribute to Hayden Panettiere

Remembering a beloved screen icon, gone too soon.

We were sad to learn last night of the sudden and unexpected passing of actress Hayden Panettiere. A talented and endlessly charismatic presence on television for nearly three decades, Panettiere was a devastatingly young 36 at the time of her death. Her family has chosen not to disclose further specifics.

Despite her relatively young age, Panettiere leaves behind an incredible body of work in film, television, music, and video games. For many people, she made her first impression as the voice of Kairi in 2002’s Kingdom Hearts, a role she continued in for more than a decade before reportedly dropping out of the series due to largely stepping back from the spotlight to focus on family and motherhood.

Her most iconic role, however, would arrive a few years after Kingdom Hearts: Panettiere played the linchpin role of the hit television series Heroes, which (along with contemporaries like Lost and Battlestar Galactica) redefined what television could be and set the stage for today’s heavily serialized, quippy, geek-friendly streaming era. As Claire Bennett, she was the fulcrum of the beloved first season, whose central refrain—“Save the cheerleader, save the world”—hinted toward the bigger mysteries and machinations of the story. In the end, Claire hardly needed saving, possessing regenerative superpowers similar to those of X-Men’s Wolverine and made her more or less indestructible... and a fan-favorite character in a show specifically designed for an audience of obsessive fans.

Heroes may have been Panettiere’s best-known role and the basis of her becoming a fixture of Comic-Con, but it hardly showcased the entirety of her skills. She starred in dramas, comedies (including a recurring role in Malcolm in the Middle), and variety programs. Panettiere found modest success as a singer, landing a handful of songs on the charts over the course of her career. More importantly, she parlayed her musical talents into what may have been her strongest and most challenging role as one of the central characters on the show Nashville. As up-and-coming pop star-turned-country/western crooner Juliette Barnes, she played a sort of mash-up of Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus—seemingly sweet yet with a ruthless streak. Panettiere deftly navigated the outward sweetness of her stage persona with the devastating highs and lows of her commercial success and cutthroat schemes to dethrone the industry’s reigning queen, the Reba-like Connie Britton.

While hardly autobiographical—you never hear a bad word about Panettiere’s personality off the set—her role in Nashville certainly did reflect her tempestuous personal life. Panettiere’s acting career began around the same time as her school career, with a recurring role on soap opera One Life to Live at age five. In This Is Me, a personal memoir published earlier this year, Panettiere wrote about the difficulties she experienced by entering the public eye at such a young age and about the unhealthy coping strategies she had adopted in order to help deal with the stress, depression, and isolation of a life lived on-camera. Panettiere appeared to have moved beyond those struggles in the past year or two, returning to acting and film production with a few small projects, in addition to publishing her memoir. That makes her loss, as she had seemingly just begun to turn things around and take control of her own life, all the more devastating, and she will be missed by her countless fans.