Hayden Panettiere's death at the age of 36 has placed a renewed focus on the struggles of child stars with addiction and re-ignited a discussion about the pressures of Hollywood. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.

Panettiere was 16 when drugs first arrived in her life in Hollywood. Ahead of a red carpet event for the hit series Heroes, she has said someone on her team handed her a pill to help amp up her energy. In her memoir, she wrote: "Within minutes, a wave of energy washed over me, like I'd just woken up from the most refreshing night's sleep of my life." She called it "the gateway drug that ushered me toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction".

The coroner's office in Greenville, South Carolina said crews treated a woman in "cardiac arrest" and her autopsy showed "no signs of trauma". No cause of death has been released, though additional tests are yet to be completed. Audio from police dispatchers and crews who responded to the address said they were responding to a "cardiac arrest" and detailed their efforts to resuscitate the woman after a possible "overdose". According to a police report, Panettiere's ex boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, and his brother Zack, were with Panettiere when emergency services came. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on their part, according to police.

It is not known if drugs or alcohol played a factor in her death, but the US Drug Enforcement Agency is joining an investigation into her death, according to US media reports.

Panettiere is one of many actors who has openly struggled with addiction after exposure to fame at an early age. Addiction experts told the BBC that early fame can put people at risk for mental health and substance abuse issues. Lucas Trautman, the medical director of Oxford Treatment Center in Mississippi, said: "They were also exposed during a developmental time to many adult aspects of life that the rest of us weren't - including traumatic experiences - and so that gives them unique risk factors for addiction."

Panettiere's death comes after she published a memoir where she discussed at length her issues with addiction, her postpartum depression and the loss of her 28-year-old brother. William Moyers, the vice-president of public affairs for Hazelden Betty Ford, said: "Her entire life from the beginning was centred in the intense public spotlight, and this didn't give Hayden much in the way of a respite."

Trautman, who has treated child stars, said they often have "adult access" to drugs and alcohol without adult protection. "We aren't equipped at a young age to be able to say no to it, to manage it, to correctly stay away from it altogether," he said.

Other child stars have talked about being exposed to drugs at an early age, including Drew Barrymore, who went to rehab at 12, and Demi Lovato, a Disney Channel star. In 2022, Lovato told the podcast Call Her Daddy: "I got into a car accident and they prescribed me opiates. My mum didn't think she would have to lock up the opiates from her 13-year-old daughter, but I was already drinking at that point."

Actress Michelle Rodriguez, who once hosted the World Music Awards with Panettiere, said this week that the number of child actors who had passed away at a young age was strange. "I just can't stand how many young people are leaving us lately. It's disheartening, and it's making me think, 'What's going on?' It's not normal," she told Variety.

Panettiere's death comes just a year after the death of Michelle Trachtenberg and months after Daveigh Chase, two child stars who both struggled with drugs and alcohol. In an essay she wrote after Panettiere's death, former Disney star Christy Carlson Romano compared early fame to a traumatic brain disease. "[W]e 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 wrote.