Hayden Panettiere's mother has broken her silence following the actress's shocking death at 36, and her words reveal just how complicated their relationship had become before tragedy struck.
Lesley Vogel, the mother of the Nashville and Heroes star, said she believes her daughter had "sadly lost her way" in the years before her death.
"I think Hayden sadly lost her way, and I wish it were different," Vogel told NBC. "I wish she had stayed true to herself because she had many incredible attributes."
The comments are especially heartbreaking because Panettiere had publicly revealed before her death that she was no longer speaking to her mother.
Their estrangement was hardly a simple celebrity family feud. In her 2026 memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere painted a difficult portrait of growing up as a child star and described her mother as a "perfectionist."
One particularly startling childhood story involved Panettiere losing a tooth while working. She alleged that her mother superglued the tooth back into her mouth because of fears that losing it could cost the young actress a job.
That anecdote takes on an even sadder dimension following Panettiere's death. The actress had spent much of her life in front of cameras, rising from childhood roles to become one of television's most recognizable young stars through Heroes and later Nashville.
But Panettiere increasingly spoke about what happened away from the cameras, including addiction, depression, postpartum depression and the enormous pressures she experienced after entering show business as a child.
Now her mother's comments offer another glimpse into a family relationship that apparently remained unresolved when Panettiere died.
The tragedy is compounded by the circumstances surrounding the actress's final years. Panettiere had endured the death of her younger brother Jansen Panettiere, an actor who died from a heart condition in 2023 at only 28.
She had also struggled with motherhood while battling addiction and mental-health difficulties. Her daughter Kaya, whom she shared with former fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, began living full-time with her father when she was two. Panettiere entered rehab in 2015 while working on Nashville.
Klitschko has now promised to make sure their daughter remembers her mother.
"Nothing will erase the times we shared," he said following Panettiere's death, adding that he would always speak about Hayden "with respect" to Kaya and make sure their daughter remembers her mother.
Meanwhile, questions remain about exactly what happened during Panettiere's final hours.
Her on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach were at the South Carolina apartment when police arrived Sunday afternoon. Paramedics were already performing CPR, but Panettiere could not be revived.
The police report noted no obvious physical reason for her unresponsiveness. An autopsy subsequently found no signs of trauma, authorities said, and police reported no evidence of foul play. Her cause of death remains under investigation.
But amid the unanswered questions surrounding Panettiere's death, her mother's remarks may be among the most emotionally complicated.
Vogel is mourning a daughter with whom she apparently had a fractured relationship, while Panettiere's own memoir left behind an account of childhood fame that included painful allegations about the woman who helped guide her career.
It makes Vogel's statement - "I wish it were different" - particularly poignant.
For a mother and daughter who had shared virtually an entire lifetime shaped by Hollywood, there would ultimately be no public reconciliation before Panettiere's death.
