Drug cocktail killed former child star Hayden Panettiere: coroner

Drug cocktail killed former child star Hayden Panettiere: coroner Nokuthula Khanyile Wed, 09/23/2026 - 06:00

SOUTH CAROLINA - Actress Hayden Panettiere, who starred in the popular TV series "Heroes" and "Nashville," died from a cocktail of drugs that included fentanyl, a US coroner said Tuesday.

The 36-year-old former child star was discovered unresponsive at a home in South Carolina last month, reportedly by long-term partner Brian Hickerson and his brother.

US media said Hickerson handed paramedics a bag of medications as they gave the unconscious Panettiere Narcan, a drug used to counter the effects of a fentanyl overdose, but she was declared dead at the scene.

The Greenville County Coroner's Office said Tuesday an autopsy showed no signs of trauma and classified the death as an accident.

Tests revealed the cause of death to be the toxic effects of fentanyl, in combination with a generic version of Xanax, a muscle relaxant, and an anti-psychotic drug.

An investigation into Panettiere's death is likely to focus on where she obtained the drugs, and could echo the probe into the circumstances surrounding the overdose of Matthew Perry, who died in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home in 2023.

Five people were sentenced for their roles in supplying the "Friends" actor with the drugs that killed him.

Born in 1989, Panettiere's credits include "Remember The Titans," "Ice Princess," "Scream 4" and "Scream VI."

She worked in Hollywood all her life, appearing in commercials at just 11 months of age and winning a Grammy nomination for voicing the "Princess Dot" character in the 1998 movie "A Bug's Life" when she was nine.

But behind the successful career lay a dark personal history.

In a memoir released in May, "This Is Me: A Reckoning," she described the pressures of being a child star and her experiences with alcohol and opioid addiction and recovery.

Panettiere had a daughter with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014. In one of her final interviews before her death, she told parenting magazine Mome that the extremely painful and dangerous birth had left her depressed and made her turn to alcohol.

She then gave custody of her daughter to Klitschko.

"I was going through a really challenging time in my life," she said in the interview. "I knew I needed to be able to put her first so that I could get the help I needed and be the mom she needed me to be."

In an interview with NPR radio in May, Panettiere said she was able to cry on cue just by channeling difficult emotions. The skill helped her career but "the thoughts and the places that I had to go in my head became darker and darker."

"How could that not have an emotional impact over time on you?" she asked.

• AFP