Hollywood Failed Hayden Panettiere

Hayden Panettiere , the former child actress who grew up onscreen before our very eyes, passed away Sunday at the age of 36 . She died five days before her 37th birthday.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” her father Alan said in a statement. “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.”

While we are still awaiting a cause of death , Panettiere, who delivered her breakthrough performance at the age of 10 in “Remember the Titans” before starring in the NBC superhero saga “Heroes,” as fan favorite Kirby Reed in the “Scream” films and Juliette Barnes in the country music drama “Nashville,” had struggled for years battling drug addiction, alcoholism and depression, and suffered mightily at the hands of Hollywood . Panettiere chronicled her Hollywood highs and lows in her eye-opening memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” released May 19 of this year. Popular on Variety

In the prologue to her book, she mentions the five stages of grief — and her belief in a sixth, floated by the author David Kessler in his book “Finding Meaning.” That stage is meaning, and Panettiere wrote that “my traumas have offered me meaning through a sense of humor, some ridiculous stories, prioritizing my health, a deeper relationship with my parents, pets I adore, animal rights and environmentalism that gives me purpose, and now, this book.”

She continued: “All the heartaches I’ve endured have allowed me to come to a place of empathy and understanding for everything my loved ones have come up against and — most importantly — for myself. They’ve also given me determination. I’m like Dory, the resilient little fish in ‘Finding Nemo,’ who ‘just keeps swimming’ even when she comes face-to-face with a bunch of sharks.”

Raised in Palisades, New York, Panettiere landed a series of commercials — the first at only eleven months old — before landing a role in the soap opera “One Life to Live” at the age of five. She described herself as a “willful child” who wouldn’t be bossed around; a “tomboy” with a big head of curly hair and a “spunky, sassy attitude.” There are plenty of bright moments in her book, like the time she tossed a football around with Denzel Washington on the set of “Remember the Titans” — a movie-making experience she called “the happiest I’d ever felt as an actor” — and disappointing ones, such as losing a role in “Panic Room” to Kristen Stewart after Nicole Kidman had backed out of the film due to injury.