Christy Carlson Romano is reflecting on the struggles of child stardom after Hayden Panettiere’s untimely death.
In an essay penned for Elle on Tuesday (August 18), the former child star described the struggles that child actors experience, such as constant rejections and the tear downs that happen "if we don’t climb to A-list fast enough.”
She added, “Is it any wonder so many of us struggle with addiction? The industry gives us the wound and then acts surprised when we reach for something to treat it.”
The 42-year-old also compared that early childhood fame to CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
“Early fame is like CTE. Not as a diagnosis. As a way of thinking about repeated impact,” Romano explained. “We now have language for youth sports: protocols, helmets, parents worried about concussions. But we have almost no language for what happens when stress, scrutiny, rejection, adult pressure, and the collapse of privacy become the architecture of a childhood.”
She also said that today’s young actors still have their mental needs “treated as inconvenient and irrelevant” and that they “do not have that kind of access or motivation” to get the help they need.
Romano made her breakout in the role Ren Stevens at age 16 in Disney Channel’s Even Stevens in June 2000. She and Panettiere co-starred in the English dub cast of 2002’s Kingdom Hearts video game.
Panettiere was found unresponsive in a Greenville, South Carolina apartment complex on Sunday (Aug. 16) and was pronounced dead by responding authorities by 2:32 p.m. the same day.
An unidentified friend, later reported by TMZ to have been Panettiere’s boyfriend’s brother Zach Hickerson, found Panettiere and found that she had gone into cardiac arrest after an apparent overdose. The manager of the property, the Judson Mill Lofts, said they were cooperating with authorities but did not provide further details with respect to the privacy of the property’s residents.
As announced by the Greenville, South Carolina Police Department in a statement per The New York Times, the initial results of the autopsy shared on Monday (Aug. 17) showed no signs of trauma, and the cause and manner of death remain pending.
Panettiere’s death was not being treated as suspicious, and a preliminary investigation into her death showed no evidence of “foul play or suspicious circumstances,” the police department confirmed. The coroner’s office case manager indicated it could take up to three months for the full results of the autopsy.
Panettiere’s film and TV credits include the 1998 Pixar movie A Bug’s Life, the popular series Heroes, Nashville, Scream 4 and Scream VI, the Kingdom Hearts series of games, Remember the Titans, and the PlayStation 4 game Until Dawn.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” a statement shared on behalf of her father, Alan Panettiere, read. “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.”
She is survived by her 11-year-old daughter, Kaya, whom she welcomed with her ex-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, in 2014. Earlier this year, she released the memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
