After years of struggling with her mental health and substance use, Hayden Panettiere died of an accidental overdose, new documents from local authorities confirm.
According to a statement from Greenville County Coroner’s Office in South Caroline, Panettiere, star of “Heroes,” “Nashville” and “Bring It On: All or Nothing,” died due to “toxic effects” of several drugs, including fentanyl. She was days away from her 37th birthday. The manner of death was ruled an accident.
The actor — who was open about using alcohol and drugs from a young age — died on Aug. 16, according to a statement from her father, Skip Panettiere.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” his statement, shared by Panettiere’s representatives, read. “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 ex-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she shared a daughter, Kaya, 11, also posted a tribute.
“Our family is going through a time of profound shock and grief,” Klitschko wrote in part. “The announcement of Hayden’s tragic death saddens me deeply. She left this world far too soon. Hayden was, although no longer my partner, an important part of my life.”.
She was pronounced dead on Aug. 16 after emergency personnel in Greenville responded to a call at the home where she’d been staying about an “unresponsive female” and provided medical assistance, local police shared at the time.
The woman, later identified as Panettiere, was in cardiac arrest, meaning her heart had stopped beating, when she was found. She was not able to be resuscitated even with advanced life support measures, the Greenville County Coroner’s Office said in a statement.
Prior to her death, the “Remember the Titans” star spoke publicly about her physical and mental health, from a recent back injury to the overwhelming grief following the 2023 death of her brother, Jansen. Here’s what we know.
Hayden Panettiere’s Cause of Death Revealed
According to a statement released on Sept. 22, 2026, from South Carolina’s Greenville County Coroner’s Office, Panettiere’s death was accidental.
“The actor died from toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, Alprazolam, Methocarbamol, and Quetiapine,” the statement read.
Fentanyl is a powerful opioid used to treat pain and as an anesthetic. 4-ANPP is a precursor to fentanyl often found in illict forms of the drugs. Alprazolam and quetiapine are prescription drugs used to treat mental health conditions, such as anxiety and major depressive disorder, while methocarbamol is a prescription muscle relaxant.
She Was Recovering From a Back Injury Months Before Her Death
In the year leading up to her death, Panettiere had been recovering from nerve damage in her back.
“I quite literally woke up and felt nothing but pins and needles from my waist down,” Panettiere told Women’s Health in a May 2026 interview. “I wasn’t able to bend my toes, lift my foot at all.”
She sought answers, but health experts had none. Panettiere wondered whether she’d be paralyzed for the rest of her life.
But, she told the outlet, barre workouts helped her regain some of her strength, and eventually, she was able to balance on her tip toes with the support of the barre. She also regained feeling in her feet.
“It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me physically for sure,” said Panettiere — and that includes the incident where she was bucked off a zebra, injuring her vertebrae, and the constant muscle injuries she sustained learning to figure skate, she added.
The actor said she took her mobility for granted before her injury.
She Had Trauma From Her Time as a Child and Teen Actor
As a young child, Panettiere played characters who overcame defeat, loss and tragedy. Because of the praise she received for her emotional performances, she said she found her roles blurring with real life. “Subconsciously, I began to associate catastrophe with adoration; people loved me because make-believe bad things happened to me,” Panettiere wrote in her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” published in May 2026.
“Reality merged with my imagination and burrowed into my core memories, where all my shame and trauma lived. Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life?”
Other traumas she said she faced in her memoir included being asked to get in bed with an older celebrity when she was 19 years old. She wrote that she felt like she was being used as a “call girl. I deserved better than that, by a lot. I needed to be with sane, normal people who didn’t care so much about fame, parties, and press and never, ever used people for their own benefit or ends.”
She also described moments when a television executive kissed her on the lips, and when an Oscar-winning actor and director exposed himself to her at a party.
She Wrote About Her Alcohol and Drug Use
She was 15 the first time someone offered her “happy pills” before walking a red carpet. Panettiere first described the moment in a 2022 interview, saying the drugs made her “peppy” while talking to the press. “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 said at the time.
She maintained her professionalism when she was on set, filming the moment’s hit show or film, but turned to substances once the cameras were off, calling it “out of control.”
“And as I got older, the drugs and alcohol became something I almost couldn’t live without.”
The actor said she was sober during her 2014 pregnancy but turned back to drugs and alcohol after giving birth. “There was just this gray color in my life,” she said, adding that she’d sip alcohol throughout the day to minimize the “shakes.”
When doctors warned her about the state of her liver, Panettiere said she went to rehab for eight months. “This hasn’t been easy, and there were a lot of ups and downs,” she said, but it was all worth it. “I don’t regret even the ugliest things that have happened to me,” Panettiere said. “I feel incredibly accomplished. And I feel like I have a second chance.”
She Was Diagnosed With Postpartum Depression
While her “Nashville” character, Juliette Barnes, was dealing with postpartum depression and substance use onscreen, so was Panettiere.
The actor and her ex-fiancé, boxer Wladimir Klitschko, welcomed their daughter, Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, in December 2014. The following year, Panettiere announced she was seeking treatment for postpartum depression.
“I can very much relate,” Panettiere said about the parallels between her own life and her character’s during a 2015 appearance on “Live! With Kelly and Michael.”
“It’s something a lot of women experience. When (you are told) about postpartum depression, you think it’s ‘I feel negative feelings towards my child; I want to injure or hurt my child.’ I’ve never ever had those feelings. Some women do.”
Instead, Panettiere felt “miserable.” She was “in tears all the time,” she said in May 2026 during an episode of Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast. She said she used alcohol to cope.
After researching her symptoms, Panettiere found that her struggles were the result of something very real and severe.
“I think a misconception is that I have been, in the past, forced into treatment when, in fact, I have been the one who sought it out, who was saying, ‘I desperately need help. I know this is going to look terrible, but I am. I cannot live like this anymore,’” she said on the podcast.
“I have everything I’ve ever wanted,” Panetierre wrote in her book, “and yet I’m still unhappy.”
After opting for longterm treatments once in Europe and again in Nashville, she knew she needed more help. She was written out of “Nashville” and lost her contract with Neutrogena.
Four years after giving birth, Panettiere gave up custody of Kaya as she continued to struggle with her mental health.
“The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking, couldn’t be further from the truth,” she told Shetty.
The 11-year-old lives with her father in Ukraine.
“By the time I finally got healthy, I felt like it would have been unfair of me and selfish of me to try to pull her out away from this life that she had created,” she added.
She Battled Grief After Her Brother Died
Panettiere’s brother, also an actor, died three years before her from cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart, which had gone undiagnosed.
Panettiere said her sadness over the loss superseded everything she knew about grief. “Maybe the five stages of grief is for people who have had a heartbreak or find out some bad news,” she said on TODAY in 2024.
“Yes, there are five stages, but there’s so much more in between,” she continued. “And when you lose somebody that you saw in all the important moments in your life, standing right next to you, it just rocks your world.”
When Jansen died, Panettiere told People, “I felt like I lost half of my soul.”
Her feelings compounded when she saw paparazzi photos of herself grieving. Seeing the “horrific” photos, she said, sparked her agoraphobia, which she’d struggled with in the past.
“I didn’t feel confident to put on clothes and get out of the house, but I also knew that I needed to get out and keep moving or I’d never stop looking and feeling this way,” she said. She worked with a fitness trainer, who helped to transform her mental state.
“I will always be heartbroken about it. I will never be able to get over it,” she told People. “No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss.”
She Wanted to Help Others By Sharing Her Health Struggles
Even as she struggled, Panettiere made a point to raise awareness of mental health conditions.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding,” she said about postpartum depression on “Live! With Kelly and Michael” in 2015.
