SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Actress Hayden Panettiere, who starred in the TV series "Heroes" and "Nashville," has died. Her father said she was a, quote, "force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her." He did not share details about her death. Panettiere started acting when she was very young. She booked her first commercial when she was just 11 months old. She went on to act in soap operas and got a big break in "Remember The Titans." I spoke with Panettiere in May to talk about her memoir, "This Is Me: A Reckoning." She told me she had desperately wanted both to fit in in the industry and to have a normal childhood, and that's very difficult in Hollywood.
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HAYDEN PANETTIERE: I wanted to have friends that were my age. I wanted to go to school like a normal kid. I wanted to play sports. And I did get to do a lot of those things, but my peers didn't look at me as one of them.
PFEIFFER: She said she would get praise as a child for crying on cue by thinking sad thoughts. At first, she imagined an animal she loved dying.
PANETTIERE: And then, as I got older and older, I became number and number to that. And the thoughts and the places that I had to go in my head became darker and darker. And how could that not have an emotional impact over time on you?
PFEIFFER: Panettiere had a daughter in 2015 and talked publicly about having had postpartum depression. She also got addicted to alcohol and drugs. All of that became storylines for the part she played on "Nashville" - the fictional country music star Juliette Barnes.
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PANETTIERE: And having to go to set every day and play that out as her, I stopped being able to tell where the character started and where I ended. Like, we were just mushed together.
PFEIFFER: Panettiere eventually lost custody of her daughter. I asked Panettiere how she felt watching her daughter grow up in private and easily make friends, things Panettiere had not been able to do when she was that age.
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PANETTIERE: Honestly, I'm just - I'm happy for her. It's not bittersweet. It's very, very uplifting to me.
PFEIFFER: Hayden Panettiere was 36.
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