In her 2026 memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” Hayden Panettiere candidly shared her battles with postpartum depression and substance abuse. Tragically, this revelation came only months before her untimely death.
The former “Heroes” star gave birth to her daughter, Kaya, with Wladimir Klitschko in December 2014. Panettiere detailed in her memoir the challenges she faced during what she described as a “traumatic” birth experience, which involved enduring 14 hours of labor, a subsequent three-hour surgery following a C-section, and undergoing seven blood transfusions.
In the aftermath of this harrowing experience, Panettiere confessed that she felt a profound emptiness upon meeting her newborn.
“She seemed like someone else’s baby, not mine,” she wrote. Panettiere expressed her disbelief at not experiencing that instant maternal love she had always heard about, as she felt no connection when she first laid eyes on her daughter.
Panettiere reflected on the daunting task of developing a bond with Kaya, admitting, “Kaya was just there, and now I had to figure out how to bond with her. It felt like an insurmountable task, and I was only on the first day,” shared the “Nashville” actress.
Panettiere said she turned to alcohol in the weeks following Kaya’s birth, drinking a bottle of wine at night before finishing a mini bottle of Fireball the next morning.
“The first thing I’d thought of when I woke up was alcohol. Not my child, not my job, and not the rest of my life. I needed a drink to function — at 6 a.m.,” she wrote in her memoir.
“When Kaya was 4 months old, between seasons three and four of ‘Nashville,’ I went into treatment for the first time, leaving her with her father,” she added.
“It was a hugely expensive facility devoted to one-on-one care, and I had a doctor and an army of experts ready, willing, and able to cater to my every need. Trust me, it’s easier to detox and recover when you’re being treated like a queen, but it was too far from the real world to give me perspective.”
Panettiere said that though she left the facility “clean and sober,” there “seemed to be no solution to my postpartum depression.”
“I also went home in denial. The idea that a little liquid could take me down or rule my life seemed impossible for a tough girl like me,” she wrote.
The “Scream VI” star revealed that she turned to prescription medication to deal with anxiety after season four of “Nashville: began filming in 2015.
“To help me with my insomnia, I had meds, the really powerful kind they’d prescribed me in treatment — but they had a catch: If I didn’t take them, I couldn’t sleep. If I did, I slept too much,” she wrote.
“I’d walked into rehab addicted to one substance, and I’d walked out completely dependent on something else,” Panettiere added.
The actress entered treatment a second time at a “fancy” facility in Europe. “Nashville” producers wrote her out of the script temporarily and Neutrogena canceled her long-standing contract.
However, Panettiere finally found out that she had postpartum depression.
The problem wasn’t about what is or isn’t wrong in my life. The issue was that I had everything I’d ever wanted — a great job, a baby, friends, a fiancé — and yet I was still unhappy,” she penned.
“I had postpartum depression, and it sucked. I wanted more than anything to get back to that place of happiness, but I didn’t even know where that place was anymore,” the “Bring It On: All or Nothing” actress added.
Panettiere was found dead in a Greenville, South Carolina, home by a friend on August 16, 2026. She was 36.
“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 father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement to Page Six.
“We ask for privacy as our family takes time to process this unimaginable loss,” he added.
Authorities said there are no signs of foul play. A cause of death has not yet been revealed.
The day before her death, Hayden had flown from Los Angeles to the Palmetto State with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson.
The “Remember the Titans” actress is survived by her daughter, Kaya, who has been living in Ukraine with her father since 2018.