Hayden Panettiere was a child actress with roles on soap operas One Life to Live and Guiding Light. She starred on NBC’s Heroes as a teenager before joining ABC’s Nashville. She took a break from acting in 2018 amid personal troubles. The actress broke her silence on abandoning her daughter. Keep reading for all the details.
Hayden Panettiere’s Memoir Addresses Addiction, Postpartum Depression
Hayden Panettiere was a rising star in Hollywood in the 2010s. She’d already paid her dues as a soap opera actress and booked roles on two massively popular primetime shows: Heroes and Nashville.
However, it all came crashing down after Nashville ended in 2018. She took an unexpected absence from Hollywood. She returned in 2023 to reprise Kirby in Scream 7. Since her return to the public eye, Hayden Panettiere has been open about her addiction to drugs and alcohol. She went to rehab in 2021 for addiction. But that wasn’t her only struggle. Her brother passed away in 2023.
Hayden Panettiere welcomed a daughter with her then-fiance, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, in 2014. When the couple split in 2018, the actress gave up custody of her young daughter, letting her move to Europe.
Hayden Panettiere Breaks Silence On Abandoning Daughter
After the birth of her daughter, Hayden Panettiere dealt with more than just addiction. She was open about her battle with postpartum depression and sought inpatient help several times.
Despite her openness about battling the illness, the internet has not been kind to the actress about giving up her child. With her memoir coming out on May 12, Hayden Panettiere has been back in the headlines and giving interviews. She responded to the claims that she “abandoned” her daughter during an interview on the On Purpose podcast.
“The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking,” she said. The actress added, “It couldn’t be further from the truth. It became this horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse and just me trying to find my way back.”
Hayden Panettiere admitted that she didn’t have a “good reaction” to her former fiance asking to take their daughter back to Ukraine when she was just 2. However, she ultimately decided it was the right thing to do. And now, her daughter is happy and healthy overseas.
“So by the time I finally got healthy, I felt like it would have been unfair of me to and selfish of me to try and pull her out and away from this life that she had created,” the Heroes actress explained.
Hayden Panettiere said she visits her daughter as much as possible and they FaceTime often. “In no way [does] she feel abandoned,” she said about her “incredible” relationship with her daughter. Tell us in the comments if you think social media users were too harsh on the actress for giving up custody of her young daughter.
Jennifer Havener grew up in a small town in Upstate New York. She earned her B.A in Writing & Literature from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She always knew watching reality TV shows and soap operas, particularly ‘Days of Our Lives’, would come in handy someday. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dogs, Lola and Ruger