Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert issues heartbreaking warning about child stardom following Hayden Panettiere’s death
Melissa Gilbert has said 'enough is enough' following the deaths of Hayden Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg, Daveigh Chase.
The Little House on the Prairie star took to Substack, to write about the pressures of child actors, having rose to fame at 10-years-old.
"Within one year, Michelle Trachtenberg, Daveigh Chase and Hayden Panettiere have died. DIED! Three former female child actors of the same generation are gone. Tragically, heartbreakingly, agonizingly too soon," she penned.
"They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, ‘WHY?”. Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?"
Advert
Gilbert then questioned 'why it feels so personal to me,' revealing she didn't know Panettiere personally, and had worked briefly with Michelle and Daveigh.
"It feels personal because I was them. As were Tatum, Kristy, Brooke, Patty, Anyssa, Dakota, Elle, Shirley, Britney, Jodie, Drew and my sister Sara, to name a few.
"We are all members of the same tribe; Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current," she continued.
"When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong."
Further down, Gilbert spoke about the changes in the past few years, particularly that of the mobile phone, saying 'now everyone is a paparazzo. There is no privacy'.
Gilbert, who rose to fame in 1974, spoke about the pressures on child actors, who she says are told to 'deliver no matter what,' being referred to as 'soldiers and machines,' - writing that she has lost count of how many times she's worked while 'horribly sick, injured or worse'.
She then went on to write about how she went back to work months after her father died, when she was just 11-years-old.
"Thank God my character cried in every single episode. That, as twisted as it sounds, was my therapy. My release," the star penned.
"That is what we are taught as young actors. These young professionals are children, and we should make sure they are allowed to be children. They should be allowed to say 'no,' she added.
"Not push through physical or emotional pain. Not be made to support their entire families. And most certainly not to be followed everywhere they go by cameras, phones and prying, exploitive eyes."
Concluding the lengthy post, Gilbert said she was thinking about Panettiere's daughter Kaya, 11, who is the same age as she was when her father died.
"And now I am weeping as I type this and I just want to scream from the rooftops, ENOUGH."
Panettiere was found unresponsive on Sunday, August 16, at a residence in Greenville, South Carolina, where emergency responders attempted cardiac life support before declaring her dead at the scene.
Her father. Skip released a statement to ABC News, which read: "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden.
"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." He then asked for privacy as the ‘family takes time to process this unimaginable loss’.
A timeline of Hayden Panettiere’s troubled Hollywood career
August 1989
Hayden Panettiere is born to firefighter Skip Panettiere and Lesley Vogel, who would go on to be Hayden’s manager.
1990
Panettiere appears in a commercial at 11 months old, later landing recurring roles in soap operas as a child actor.
2004/2005
Aged 15, Panettiere said someone on her team started offering her ‘happy pills’. She later tells People: “They were to make me peppy during interviews.
"I had no idea that this was not an appropriate thing, or what door that would open for me when it came to my addiction.”
2006
Aged 17, Panettiere lands one of the defining roles of her career as Claire Bennett in Heroes.
2007-2009
Panettiere later reveals several disturbing incidents that happened during this period in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning.
Aged 18, she claims she was led onto a yacht by ‘somebody that I had grown to trust and see as a protector’ and placed into bed next to an ‘undressed man who was very famous’.
In 2008, she alleged a network executive kissed her on the lips at a party.
Aged 19, she said a ‘well-respected, award-winning actor’ tricked her into looking at his testicles through an unzipped fly.
In 2007, she also starts dating Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia - she is 18 and he is 30. They split in 2009.
2009
Panettiere starts dating Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
Meanwhile, her father Skip is handed two years of informal probation after pleading ‘no contest’ to spousal battery.
2013
Panettiere and Klitschko get engaged.
December 2014
Panettiere and Klitschko’s daughter Kaya is born. Panettiere endures an incredibly difficult pregnancy, hemorrhaging during her c-section and being forced to undergo a three-hour surgery.
2015
Panettiere begins suffering severe post-partum depression. She later tells Jay Shetty on his On Purpose podcast: “I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. I wasn't connecting with [Kaya] the way I should be.”
She uses alcohol to manage her mental health struggles and enters treatment when Kaya is four months old.
She later says she became dependent on medication to sleep, and then turned to drinking vodka.
2018
Klitschko presents Panettiere with custody papers asking for full custody of Kaya. After initially fighting back, she eventually accepts and Kaya goes to live with Klitschko in Ukraine.
She writes in her memoir: “Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life.”
Meanwhile, her long-running role in TV show Nashville comes to an end and she doesn’t have any more TV or film roles for five years.
In the same year, she starts dating actor Brian Hickerson.
2020
Panettiere spends an eight month stint in rehab.
She experiences brutal alcohol withdrawal symptoms including insomnia and intense headaches.
Meanwhile, her now-ex Hickerson is charged with felony assault.
2021
Hickerson pleads no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse/cohabitant/girlfriend/child's parent and is sentenced to 45 days in jail and four years probation.
2023
Panettiere returns to acting, reprising her role as Kirby Reed in Scream VI.
In the same year, her brother Jansen dies aged 28 from an enlarged heart.
May 2026
Panettiere releases her memoir in which she makes disturbing allegations against film stars and industry execs from when she was a teenager.
She also opens up on her experience of postpartum depression and comes out as bisexual.
August 2026
Panettiere tragically dies. Police say: “The preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.”
Topics: Hayden Panettiere, Celebrity
Kiesha Dosanjh