Actress Hayden Panettiere was found dead of a suspected overdose aged 36 at a South Carolina Airbnb, shortly before her final project, an animal welfare campaign for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was unveiled.
PETA released the campaign video on Tuesday, showing the former Heroes star posing in a bathtub to highlight the restrictive conditions faced by dolphins and whales kept in marine amusement parks.
Panettiere recorded the advertisement in the last weeks of her life. In the clip, the longtime marine life advocate compares human bathing to animal captivity, asking viewers to imagine spending their entire lives in a bathtub.
"Imagine spending your entire life in a bathtub. That's what it's like for dolphins and whales in tiny tanks at marine amusement parks," Panettiere said in the clip. "We can end this, you and me."
She added: "Can you imagine their frustration, their trauma, their depression? All that is important and crucial for their wellbeing is ripped away."
Police report details South Carolina scene
Panettiere, who would have turned 37 on Friday, was pronounced dead on Sunday in Greenville, a city located in upstate South Carolina. She had traveled to the area with her on-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson, a native of the state.
A newly released police report confirmed that Hickerson and his brother Zachary were on the scene when she was pronounced dead. Hickerson conducted a turbulent romance with Panettiere and previously served time in jail for abusing her.
An autopsy conducted following her death found no signs of trauma that would have contributed to her passing.
History of marine mammal activism
Panettiere was a longtime advocate for ocean wildlife. At age 18, she participated in The Cove, an Oscar-winning 2009 documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos that condemned Japanese dolphin hunting.
In her segment filmed in 2007, she joined a group of anti-whaling activists who rode surfboards into a killing cove in Taiji, Japan, to mount a standoff with local fishermen.
Following disputed reports that Japanese authorities had issued a warrant for her arrest, Panettiere remained firm in her convictions. In a statement to VOA News, she spoke out against "outdated, senseless cultural traditions and lazy, bad habits that are resulting in the annihilation of our planet's resources and the extinction of our species."
"I'd do it again," Panettiere told E! News after returning to Los Angeles. "I was very excited that people were interested in what we did. In this town, you tend to only get publicity for not wearing underwear or going to rehab."
Struggles with addiction and family custody
Panettiere died following a prolonged struggle with alcohol and opiates. In 2020, she spent eight months in a rehabilitation facility after contracting jaundice, recalling in her memoir that her doctor warned she would be dead within five years if she did not stop drinking.
In 2018, Panettiere voluntarily gave up custody of her daughter Kaya, now 11, to focus on her recovery from personal demons. Kaya was placed in the care of her father, former Ukrainian heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko, with whom Panettiere maintained an amicable co-parenting bond.
"Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life," Panettiere wrote in her memoir published months before her death, "and it's hard to describe the layers of emotion, including sadness, resentment, and anger, I've felt because of it."
The memoir also detailed her strained relationship with her mother, Lesley Vogel, who managed Panettiere as a child star before the two ultimately became estranged.
Co-star memories from final movie
The release of the PETA advertisement came shortly after actor Justin Chatwin, who co-starred with Panettiere in her final movie Sleepwalker, reflected on working with her during production last year.
"We hit it off great and it was an awesome shoot, but it was about domestic abuse and it was subject matter that may have hit close to home, because she did mention it," Chatwin told People. "She opened up to me about a lot of things."
Chatwin observed that Panettiere appeared lonely and was struggling on set. "I could tell she was struggling, and I was like, 'I don't think it's this movie.' There's a handful of women that I've worked with that I really liked, and I really loved working with her, but I also know that she was really lonely," he said.
Chatwin had previously met Panettiere during the height of her fame on Heroes, which aired on NBC from 2006 to 2010, but noticed a marked difference in her state of mind on Sleepwalker.
"Hayden seemed different when I met her this time than when I met her in the early years," Chatwin said. "I've been sober for 15 years, so I know this world of addiction, and Hollywood, it takes, and it takes from youth."
"I'm sure that everyone else is going to say: 'Oh, she's amazing. She's such a sweet person on set,' because she was," Chatwin noted. "But we're trained to be actors, so we're acting on set, you know? And she is sweet. She had a beautiful heart. But we're trained to be on, and I really liked spending time with her because she took that off, and she was authentic with me about her life and she opened up about her struggles with addiction."
"And who knows where it comes from? Does it come from Hollywood? Does it come from home? And a lot of times, it's both," Chatwin added. The Daily Mail contacted Chatwin's representatives for further comment.
