Having pulled herself from the throes of postpartum depression, endured several stints in rehab to overcome an addiction to alcohol and opioids and navigated the grief of losing her younger brother Jansen Panettiere in 2023, Hayden Panettiere had learned a lot about what it looks like to save herself.
For starters, “I do have a great therapist,” the 36-year-old explained in an exclusive interview with E! News this past May, just three months before her shocking, sudden Aug. 16 death. (According to dispatch audio obtained by People and TMZ, officials were heard discussing a possible overdose. “The case is under investigation by the Greenville Police Department in conjunction with the Greenville County Coroner’s Office,” a spokesperson for the department told E! News in a statement. “The preliminary investigation has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.”)
A recovering people pleaser, the actress, who booked her first role at just 11 months old, was focused on establishing boundaries. The key, the author of This Is Me: A Reckoningdetailed to E!, is continuously “checking in with myself, being self-aware, being surrounded by healthy people who bring out the best in me.”
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Hayden Panettiere: Life in Photos
And as for dating, “I’ve been through a bit of trauma in that area,” Panettiere acknowledged. “So, I’m focusing on me.”
While her 2026 memoir detailed her out-of-nowhere split from Heroes costar Milo Ventimiglia and broken engagement from Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko—dad to her 11-year-old daughter Kaya—it’s the years she spent entangled with South Carolina native Brian Hickerson that could fill an entire anthology.
The Nashville alum initially connected with the aspiring actor and real estate agent through her brother in 2018, fresh off the official end of her on-and-off relationship with Klitschko. And fans were privy to his subsequent string of legal troubles.
After Hickerson was arrested on a domestic violence charge in May 2019 (he pleaded not guilty to one count of felony domestic violence later that month; the case was dismissed in September) and February 2020, Panettiere made the move to obtain a restraining order that July. Arrested two days later, Hickerson was eventually sentenced to 45 days in county jail, plus four years of formal probation, after pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend.
“I am coming forward with the truth about what happened to me with the hope that my story will empower others in abusive relationships to get the help they need and deserve,” Panettiere shared on Instagram at the time. “I am prepared to do my part to make sure this man never hurts anyone again.” (E! News has reached out to Hickerson. He has not yet responded.)
Because the pain he’d caused her was nearly unimaginable.
In one instance, she detailed in This Is Me, he “busts up my face so badly I don’t leave the house for weeks.” In another, she wrote, he’d smashed her head into a wall.
But it was the time he’d screamed at her to run as far away as she could in five seconds before he threw a remote control at her that Hickerson tried to have tossed from the book.
“Who wants to read something about themselves, right?” he reasoned to TMZ in May, acknowledging he was drunk at the time. “But you gotta be vulnerable and I did it.”
He’d remained in Panettiere’s orbit after, the pair spotted line dancing in West Hollywood in July 2021, following his release from jail.
At the time, they weren’t two-stepping together, but rather “working on a friendship,” Hickerson insisted to E! News. “We have a long history together, and the first step in my recovery as an abuser is making amends. That’s exactly what Hayden has been gracious enough to allow me to do.”
Though she had a decidedly different slant on the scenario.
“Getting an abusive person out of your life is like trying to rip a weed out that is so entangled into your life,” she explained to Us Weekly this past May, “and every time you pull it out another weed pops back up and you’re like, I thought I killed this. They always manage to find a way to slither back in, even if you’re an incredibly strong-willed person.”
She’d previously believed his Valentine’s Day 2020 arrest in Wyoming was the point of no return and it certainly “helped push me in the right direction,” she told the outlet, “but it still took me a long time. I still struggled to fully put a kibosh to it for a while.”
In fact, when speaking to The New York Times in 2023 as her comeback vehicle Scream VIhit theaters, Panettiere acknowledged “there are feelings there, yes.” As for what she might do about those emotions, it was “contingent on him continuing on this road of recovery.” And E! News has learned that Panettiere traveled with Hickerson from L.A. to South Carolina the day before her death.
Single when she sat down with E! in May, Panettiere shared that she wasn’t necessarily looking for love. But should the “right person” enter her obit…
“The door is not closed,” she shared. “I love to be in love.”
Keep reading for a look back at their relationship.
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Looking back on the situation, Panettiere told Us Weekly, “I’ve always seen myself as such a resilient and strong woman. The idea that I could allow something like this to happen to me blew my mind. It blew the minds of the people that knew me best.”
“Hayden has been privately managing a temporary nerve condition, which is the reason she was seen using crutches,” her rep told E! News in a statement. “She is recovering well and is on the mend.”
