Hayden Panettiere, whose Disney career stretched from voicing Princess Dot in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life to four seasons of Nashville on ABC, died Sunday at age 36. Her representative confirmed the news, and her father, Skip Panettiere, called her “an incredible light and a force of nature” in a statement asking for privacy while the family processes the loss.
Police in Greenville, South Carolina said officers and EMS personnel responded to a report of an unresponsive woman at around 1:50 p.m. Sunday, and that she was pronounced deceased at the scene. No cause of death has been released, and her publicist said an investigation is ongoing.
The Greenville County Coroner’s Office added detail on Monday: first responders found her in cardiac arrest at a residence where she had been temporarily staying, life support measures were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced deceased at 2:32 p.m. An autopsy completed Monday found no signs of trauma that would have contributed to her death, and Greenville police say the preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances. The cause and manner of death remain pending further investigation and additional studies.
A Disney Career That Started At Nine
Panettiere was nine years old when she voiced Dot, the brave younger ant princess in A Bug’s Life, Pixar’s second feature film. The role earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, making her one of the youngest nominees in the award’s history at the time. Two years later she voiced Suri the lemur in Dinosaur and played Sheryl Yoast, the football obsessed daughter of Will Patton’s coach, opposite Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans.
The Disney roles kept coming through her teens. She appeared in Touchstone’s Raising Helen, starred in the Disney Channel Original Movie Tiger Cruise, and played competitive figure skater Gen Harwood in Ice Princess. Video game fans knew her voice as well as her face: she originated Kairi in the first Kingdom Hearts and returned for Kingdom Hearts II and Birth by Sleep, a franchise that had its own major moment at this weekend’s D23.
Juliette Barnes Made Her A Two Time Golden Globe Nominee
After breaking out as indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on NBC’s Heroes, Panettiere returned to the Disney fold in 2012 as country star Juliette Barnes on Nashville. The musical drama ran on ABC for its first four seasons before moving to CMT, and the role brought her two Golden Globe nominations along with some of the most personal work of her career, as Juliette’s storylines around addiction and postpartum depression mirrored struggles Panettiere later discussed openly. Her other credits included the Scream franchise, where she played fan favorite Kirby Reed in Scream 4 and Scream VI.
Tributes From The People Who Knew Her Best
Tributes arrived through Monday. Connie Britton, who spent six seasons opposite Panettiere as Nashville’s dueling leads, remembered her co-star’s brilliance in an Instagram tribute built around photos from the show, writing that “I have no words for this sad song. Just heartbreak,” before closing with a wish that she sleep easy now.
Spy Kids star Alexa PenaVega mourned Panettiere alongside Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase, three former child actors the industry has lost in recent years, describing them not as names from her childhood but as “girls I grew up alongside” in a world she called exciting and incredibly hard, and urging people to hold their loved ones close.
On Tuesday, Ice Princess director Tim Fywell remembered Panettiere and Trachtenberg together, as the 2005 film trended among fans grappling with the realization that both of its young stars are now gone. Trachtenberg, who played Harvard bound skater Casey Carlyle to Panettiere’s rival turned friend Gen, died in February 2025 at age 39. Fywell described the pair as having completely different personalities on set, Trachtenberg all infectious laughter and offbeat comic timing while Panettiere practiced her skating for hours and pushed to make every take truthful, and remembered them with huge affection as “two shining talents, gone far too soon.”
She Spent Her Final Years Telling Her Own Story
Panettiere published her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, earlier this year, reflecting on childhood fame, motherhood, and the 2023 death of her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, at age 28. She spoke frankly in interviews about how deeply that loss affected her. She is survived by her daughter, Kaya, whom she shared with former fiance Wladimir Klitschko.
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