She was on camera at 11 months old and never really stopped. Nine chapters of a career that ran from Pixar to Nashville.
Panettiere was found in cardiac arrest at a home in Greenville, South Carolina, and died at 36. Her cause of death remains pending investigation.
Born in New York in 1989, she filmed her first commercial before her first birthday. By the mid-1990s she was on two soaps at once, One Life to Live and Guiding Light.
At nine she voiced Princess Dot in A Bug's Life, Pixar's 1998 follow-up to Toy Story. It made her a familiar voice before she was a familiar face.
In Remember the Titans she played the coach's football-obsessed daughter, opposite Denzel Washington. She was ten, and she stole every scene she got.
She voiced Kairi in Kingdom Hearts in 2002, then led Disney's Ice Princess in 2005 as a physics student who skates. The teen-lead years had arrived.
Heroes made her a star in 2006. As Claire Bennet, the cheerleader who could not be hurt, she carried the tagline that defined NBC's biggest hit.
She played horror obsessive Kirby Reed in Scream 4 in 2011. Fans spent a decade insisting Kirby lived, and in 2023 Scream VI proved them right.
From 2012 to 2018 she played country's spikiest rising star on Nashville, singing her own vocals. The role brought two Golden Globe nominations.
She campaigned against whaling and for domestic violence survivors, raised her daughter Kaya, and published her memoir This Is Me in May 2026.
She died five days before her 37th birthday, after three decades of work. Nashville's Connie Britton called her "bursting with brilliance, shining so bright".