Rose McGowan issued a firm warning about future child actors in light of Hayden Panettiere’s sudden and tragic death at 36.
“Rest in Power,” McGowan, 52, wrote in an Instagram upload on Friday, August 21. “Don’t put kids in show business. None of this is normal. May her spirit be free of those who orchestrated.”
McGowan and Panettiere had both worked as child actors before maintaining theirHollywood stardom as adults. Panettiere died on August 19 at the age of 36 — just the latest young Hollywood actress who died after navigating a notoriously troubling industry.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” the late star’s father, Skip Panettiere, told Us in a statement shared via a rep, announcing his daughter’s death. “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.”
In addition to her father, Hayden is survived by her estranged mother, Lesley Vogel, and her 11-year-old daughter, Kaya, whom the Nashville alum shared with ex Wladimir Klitschko. (Hayden’s younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, died in 2023 at the age of 28 after an undiagnosed heart condition.)
Hayden’s death subsequently sparked a conversation about childhood stardom among the likes of actors McGowan, Anna Paquin and Melissa Gilbert.
“It’s not a coincidence that so many former, specially pre-sexualized female ‘child stars’ have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends,” Paquin, 44, wrote via Instagram on Friday. “We were not as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper, as we are supposed to be. It’s a strange, small club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry made us feel.”
The She’s All That actress added, “I believe you, and I will stand by your side. You aren’t alone. Let’s have each other’s backs. It might make public discourse less terrifying.”
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Gilbert, 62, reshared Paquin’s statement on her page, thanking the X-Men star for speaking out, writing, “Someone has to say something. Someone has to change this. Someone has to help.”
Gilbert, who rose to fame on the original Little House on the Prairie, further noted in a Substack essay that Panettiere’s death, along with the losses of fellow child stars Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase earlier this year, personally affected her.
“We are all members of the same tribe [of] Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current,” Gilbert noted in her essay. “When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”
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