Hayden Panettiere revealed the pressures of being a child star in her candid memoir just months before her death. The Nashville and Heroes star's tragic death was confirmed in a statement by her father on Sunday at the age of 36.
Early Career and Memoir Revelations
In her tell-all book, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the actress explained how tough the start of her career was in the acting world. Aged just 11 months old, Panettiere had been thrust into the limelight and starred in commercials.
By eight, she was taking on a more starring role and claimed her mum added "a dab of superglue" to a fake tooth to make sure it stayed in her mouth. She said of the incident with her mum Lesly Vogel: "Partly in horror and partly out of respect for the MacGyver-like skills I had no idea she possessed, I stepped back to give Mum some room.
"A little voice in my head told me that if the superglue wasn’t dry, I was going to live with this flipper for all eternity. I closed my mouth and licked my top teeth. Then I opened my mouth and smiled."
Commercials and Relationship with Mother
She told CBS News in May she had appeared in around 50 commercials by the age of 50. "It just never stopped," she said.
Her memoir revealed she had ended her professional relationship with her mother as a teenager. And speaking to US Weekly earlier this year, she went on: "Unfortunately, we don’t have a relationship right now. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day."
Emotional Toll of Acting
Panettiere revealed that one trait of hers as she became a successful actress also seemed to get overused as she got older. She revealed she was able to cry on cue, calling them "trigger tears".
Speaking to NPR, she said that it was a "very beneficial" skill set as an actor in the industry. But she said as soon as producers found out she was able to "it was almost like it was written into every scene, every storyline".
She told the publication: "But the more I did it, it was - the things I had to - the mental place I had to go, like, when I was a child, it was very simple. You know, I just had to think about, you know, an animal that I loved dying.
"And then as I got older and older, I became numb-er and numb-er to that, and the thoughts and the places that I had to go in my head became darker and darker. And how could that not have an emotional impact over time on you?"
She went on: "Then I would get praise afterwards, which made it very strange. It was like that emotional pain - I was, you know, patted on the back and applauded for going to those places. But there - I was in this very dark, emotional place."
Loss of Childhood and Death
In May, Panettiere also spoke candidly to Jay Shetty about the cost of becoming famous as a child. She said she had lost "the innocence of a normal childhood".
"I felt like I was alone in a room full of people," she told him.
Panettiere's father's statement confirming her death was shared with American news network ABC. It read: "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden."
"She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen," her father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement.
The details around her death are unknown.
