Hayden Panettiere was offered up to Hollywood’s…
For all the sequels and remakes pumped out by Hollywood, the most overplayed storyline is the death or downfall of a once luminous baby star — normally at the palms of habit or mental sickness.
Hayden Panettiere is now sadly one of them. The troubled actress handed away over the weekend from an obvious overdose. She was only 36, just 5 days short of her next birthday.
In May, Panettiere launched her heartbreaking memoir, “This is Me: A Reckoning,” where she laid naked her harrowing battles with habit, home abuse and the postpartum depression that led her to give up custody of her daughter, Kaya, to her former companion, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
In one of her last interviews before her death this week, Hayden Panettiere appeared on “Tamron Hall” in May to plug her heartbreaking memoir, “This is Me: A Reckoning.” Disney via Getty Images
The revelatory guide was her story. But it was also an indictment of the industry that turned her into a family title.
Remember, Tinseltown is a place where its brightest stars not only make films — they also export their values and morality and lecture us every probability they get.
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But take into account the source.
Over at Variety, author Marlow Stern argued that it was Hollywood that “failed Panettiere.”
Indeed, the actress offered ample evidence to help this principle, writing that somebody on her group gave her “happy pills” at the tender age of 15.
In a now haunting image from Disney’s “Ice Princess,” Hayden Panettiere (left) poses with co-star Michelle Trachtenberg. Both former baby actresses handed away this 12 months. ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
“They were to make me peppy during interviews,” Panettiere said. “I had no idea that this was not an appropriate thing, or what door that would open for me when it came to my addiction.”
She detailed the disgusting story of an older feminine good friend hand-delivering her, a stunning 18-year-old starlet, to a “very famous” older man mendacity in mattress — presumably ready for the next meal to be dropped into his lair.
Ever dutiful, Panettiere never named names.
A struggling Hayden Panettiere gave custody of her daughter, Kaya, to her former companion, Wladimir Klitschko. SBMF / BACKGRID
The showbiz blob — with all its cretins and creatures, and its tradition that treats baby stars as commodities — is harmful for impressionable younger people.
But we must be trustworthy. No sane particular person ought to permit their baby to be raised by — or in — the industry.
The first line of protection against such predatory forces ought to be mother and father or main care givers. They ought to also be the second and third line. Parents ought to be an impenetrable fortress for their youngsters, no matter how precocious and strong-willed those offspring are.
In fact, that means they need parental guardrails even more.
But, over and over, many mothers and dads abdicate their most significant position of protector.
Hayden Panettiere with her mom, Lesley Vogel (left), misplaced her late brother, Jansen Panettiere, in 2023. Getty Images
Panettiere, a petite blonde with the million-dollar smile, was only 11 months outdated when she began incomes a paycheck for work in commercials. She went on to act in a cleaning soap opera, films like “Remember The Titans” and big community hits like “Heroes” and “Nashville.”
Super thrilling proper? Except that, by the age of 12, she said, spending her childhood inhabiting different characters led to an identification disaster.
“But who the heck was I? Like, just without this, who would I be without this?” she told podcaster Jay Shetty back in May.
She was sure of one factor. Her mom, Lesley Vogel, was her supervisor.
“She was my boss. That’s how I saw her,” Panettiere said, calling it a “tough pill to swallow.”
In that same interview, a fragile-sounding Panettiere detailed her estrangement from her mom.
A younger Hayden Panettiere dazzled on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” in 2000.
At 19, she determined to end their skilled relationship, hoping to forge a more regular one between mom and daughter.
Instead, her mom, according to Panettiere, walked away — informing her baby, “You owe me.”
Maybe there’s another aspect to this story. But Hollywood has a behavior of seducing mother and father with money and proximity to fame.
I believe back to a 2023 interview with Corey Feldman, who is a strolling billboard for screwed-up childhood actors. In it, he admired the nurturing household unit around his “Goonies” co-star Ke Huy Quan.
“He had a very sheltered childhood, he had great parents, a great family — they never let him out of their sight,” Feldman told Page Six. “If you went into his dressing room, there would be his mom, dad and grandma, the whole family, making wontons and cooking. There was always something cooking!”
It stood out to Feldman because such a scene was an anomaly in that city.
To me, Panettiere will always be the gridiron-loving tomboy in the long-lasting film “Remember the Titans.”
In “Remember the Titans,” a younger Hayden Panettiere held her own with Denzel Washington. In 2013, she said she wished she might go back to that time in her life. ©Buena Vista Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
She was only 10 years outdated, but she stole the show and held her own next to the great Denzel Washington.
The film was made just before she started to battle with her identification. It was the top of her happiness.
“You have no idea how many times in my life I have wished and prayed — if I had wished to go back to any time in my life, it would be going back to ‘Remember the Titans,’” she told Entertainment Tonight back in 2013.
It’s price noting that she portrayed a daddy’s lady from a tight-knit household in a tight-knit group.
If only her life imitated artwork.
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