Before Hayden Panettiere's death: "She was really lonely"
Justin Chatwin, who starred alongside Panettiere in her final film, Sleepwalker, spoke about their time working together last year and revealed what she told him about dealing with addiction and trauma. "I've been clean for 15 years, so I know this world of addiction - and I saw that she was struggling," he described. Meanwhile, the final campaign she filmed just two weeks before her death has been released.
What was really going on with Hayden Panettiere in the period leading up to her death? Was she dealing with addiction again, and what exactly happened in the final hours of her life? There are still no official answers to these questions, and the suspicion that she died of an overdose has not yet been confirmed. However, an actor who starred alongside her in her final film provides a glimpse into her life in recent months and tells of the difficulties she faced away from the cameras.
Justin Chatwin, who starred with Panettiere in the film Sleepwalker, told PEOPLE that during filming she seemed really lonely to him. "We got along great and the filming was great, but the film was about domestic violence, and that's a subject that might have been close to her heart, because she mentioned it. She opened up to me about a lot of things," he said.
Sleepwalker, a psychological thriller filmed in the winter of 2025 and released this past January, follows a woman dealing with the loss of her daughter following a tragic car accident, with Panettiere playing the lead role. Chatwin and Panettiere first met during the time she starred in the superhero drama Heroes, and met again years later on the set of Sleepwalker.
"Hayden looked different when I met her this time, compared to the early years," said Chatwin. "I've been clean for 15 years, so I know this world of addiction. And Hollywood - it takes, and it takes from youth." In her personal life, Panettiere was the mother of Kaya Evdokia Klitschko (11), her daughter from her former partner, Wladimir Klitschko. In 2018, Panettiere transferred full custody of Kaya to Klitschko during a period when she was dealing with addiction and postpartum depression, which she detailed extensively in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. In the book, she also wrote about traumatic experiences she went through in her teenage years and revealed her bisexuality.
"I could see she was struggling, and I said to myself, 'I don't think this is the movie'," Chatwin added. "There are a handful of women I've worked with and really loved, and I really loved working with her, but I also know she was really lonely." According to him, already at the beginning of work on Sleepwalker, Panettiere opened up to him and told about the rehabilitation she went through and the struggles she had with trauma.
"I'm sure everyone else will say, 'Oh, she's amazing. She's such a sweet person on set', because she was. But we are trained to be actors, so we act on set, and she is sweet. She had a good heart. She was authentic with me about her life and opened up about her struggles with addiction." Chatwin had a hard time coming to terms with Panettiere's death, and said that alongside the sadness he also feels anger that such cases continue to happen. "I felt sad this morning, but I'm angry. Because I want to point a finger at something for this, and it keeps happening," he said. "She was great and super open and we had a great time together, and I'm just sad that another one has fallen. It's not the first time, it happens every year and it's like no one is really dealing with it."
Meanwhile, yesterday, Panettiere's final campaign was released, which she filmed just about two weeks before her death. In the campaign for the animal rights organization PETA, the Heroes star appears naked in a bathtub and speaks out against keeping dolphins and whales in captivity. "Imagine living your whole life in a bathtub," she says in the video, which the organization released as a tribute to her many years of activism for animals.
Hayden Panettiere was found earlier this week without signs of life in her apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, after she had apparently taken an overdose. In a recording of a 911 call, it is heard that paramedics were called to the apartment following a report of an unidentified woman who suffered cardiac arrest. Within minutes they began performing resuscitation efforts, but shortly thereafter her death was pronounced. Panettiere died just five days before her 37th birthday.
