Hayden Panettiere, the actress and singer best known for playing rising country star Juliette Barnes on the musical drama Nashville, has died, her representative confirmed to ABC News. She was 36. A cause of death was not immediately known.
Panettiere starred on Nashville from 2012 to 2018 opposite Connie Britton. Her performances anchored the show’s companion soundtrack series, released through Big Machine Records. The debut soundtrack, The Music of Nashville: Season 1, Volume 1, debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 on Top Country Albums in 2012, selling 56,000 copies in its first week. Her recordings as Juliette Barnes — including “Telescope,” “Don’t Put Dirt on My Grave Just Yet” and duets such as “Wrong Song” — earned her a following among country listeners, and she twice received Golden Globe nominations for the role.
Born in Palisades, New York, in 1989, Panettiere began acting as a child, appearing in Ally McBeal, Remember the Titans and Message in a Bottle, and voicing a character in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. Her breakout role came on the NBC superhero series Heroes in 2006, where she played Claire Bennet. Later credits included Scream 4 and Scream VI, I Love You, Beth Cooper and the TV movie Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.
In May, Panettiere released a memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she discussed her experiences with fame, motherhood and mental health, including postpartum depression. She shared a daughter, Kaya, with former heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko, with whom she had an on-and-off relationship over nine years before the couple separated in 2018.
Her death comes a little more than two years after that of her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, who died in February 2023 at 28.
Source: Billboard
