By Abb Jones
The Reelness

Actress Hayden Panettiere, best known for her roles in the TV series Heroes and Nashville, and in the Scream film franchise, has died while on a trip to Greenville, South Carolina. She was 36 – just five days shy of her 37th birthday. Her cause of death is still unclear although paramedics in Greenville say she had suffered cardiac arrest.

Born in Palisades, New York on August 21, 1989 to a firefighter father and former soap opera actress mother, Panettiere worked as a child actress in TV commercials and soap operas, before getting her big break portraying cheerleader Claire Bennet on the 2006 NBC superhero series Heroes.

Panettiere would later star in the 2012 ABC drama series Nashville, where she portrayed a country music singer. She also appeared as Kirby Reed in Scream 4 and Scream 6.

In recent years Panettiere became more open about her post-partum depression and an addiction to painkillers that led Panettiere to relinquish custody of her now 11-year-old daughter Kaya, whom she shared with former fiancé, former world heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko. As of May 2026, when Panettiere released her memoir, “This is Me: A Reckoning,” she said she maintained a good co-parenting relationship with Klitschko and frequently visited her daughter in Ukraine.