It was mid May, and child-star-turned-screen-veteran Hayden Panettiere was proudly promoting her new memoir.

The book lifted the lid on her rise from child star to screen sweetheart, and gave remarkably candid details about her alcoholism, postnatal depression, familial trauma and decision to give up custody of her daughter Kaya, 11, to the child's father, Panettiere's ex-fiancé, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.

Her publisher was delighted, and her former firefighter father proud.

Her mother, however, was scathing.

'After 20 years of trauma, I took the advice of professionals and chose the no-contact route,' she said in a statement at the time.

'As many parents of entertainment children [know], we are all too familiar with the painful observation of watching the self-destructive paths they sometimes choose.

'Sadly, this is out of our control. You cannot save someone who does not want to be saved.'

Two months later, Lesley Vogel, 70, must be ruing those words.

'After 20 years of trauma, I took the advice of professionals and chose the no-contact route,' Vogel said in a statement at the time

Hayden Panettiere grew up in the spotlight from cherubic commercial actress to burgeoning teen star

Panettiere, 36, was found dead on Sunday afternoon at an apartment block in Greenville, South Carolina, her on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson's home state.

She and Hickerson - a real estate agent with whom Panettiere had a tumultuous relationship, according to her memoir - had reportedly flown from Los Angeles, where they shared a home, to South Carolina the day prior.

An 'acquaintance' of Panettiere called 911 at 1.51pm on Sunday, describing her as 'unresponsive.' According to the dispatch audio, the actress was having a 'cardiac arrest,' and a voice can be heard discussing a possible 'overdose.'

Panettiere was pronounced dead less than 40 minutes later.

It was her father, Skip Panettiere, who issued a statement that evening confirming the tragic news.

Her mother, who separated from Skip in 2008 after he was charged with misdemeanor spousal battery, filing for divorce in 2012, is yet to comment.

Their daughter's untimely death is another devastating blow for the former couple, who lost their 28-year-old son Jansen to a heart condition in 2023.

And it is a tragic end to Vogel's intense, fraught relationship with her only daughter.

Panettiere grew up in the spotlight. A cherubic commercial actress before she even turned one, she was a global sensation on the big and small screens by the time she was in her teens.

With her petite frame, blonde hair and girl-next-door bubbly charisma, Panettiere embodied the glossy promise of being the toast of Tinseltown, shining in acclaimed roles on NBC's Heroes and ABC's Nashville.

Yet behind that sunny smile and polished facade, the actress harbored years of deeply personal turmoil and trauma.

Panettiere revealed in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, that her fractured relationship with her mother, a fellow Hollywood actress, may be the most chilling aspect of all.

In her memoir, Panettiere writes about her fractured relationship with her mother, Lesley Vogel, and the devastating loss of her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, in 2023. The trio are seen in 2019

By the time she was five years old, Panettiere landed recurring roles on soap operas like One Life to Live and Guiding Light

Panettiere embodied the glossy promise of being the toast of Tinseltown, especially shining in acclaimed roles on NBC's Heroes

Ahead of the book's release, Panettiere alleged her mother's management of her as a child star contributed to the many demons she's faced, such as alcohol and opioid addiction.

The worst of the revelations, however, may be her claim that her mother was only invested in their relationship financially.

Back in May, a source close to the actress told the Daily Mail that the estrangement from her mother was 'worse than anyone knows.'

The source claimed: 'Their relationship has been going downhill for about two years now.'

Panettiere, who began working at eight months old and landed her first commercial, a spot for a Playskool toy, when she was just 11 months, was managed into superstardom as a child actor by Vogel.

By the time she was five, Panettiere had landed recurring roles on soap operas like One Life to Live and Guiding Light.

But, according to the actress, the reality behind this childhood success was dark. In her memoir she recalls her mother as harsh and critical of her even at the most tender age.

After one audition, for an advertisement for Kodak, Panettiere recalls how she froze and couldn't perform. But worse than that humiliation was the prospect of telling her own mother about her failure.

'For a hot minute,' she admits, 'I contemplated letting my manager tell her later, then I relented. "Um, I didn't do it."

'Mom stood up. "You didn't do it? I drove all the way here and you just walked out? We'll talk about it in the car. Get in your stroller."

'Mom pushed me out the door and onto the sidewalk, moving a little more quickly than she had on the way to the audition. My heart was pounding. Mom was a perfectionist, and she knew what I was capable of. She expected the best from me, and I hadn't come close to delivering that. Now she was disappointed in me, and that was a fate worse than death.'

Her mother, Panettiere claims, had several levels of anger: 'When she was irritated, she opened her mouth ever so slightly. When she was mad, she clenched her jaw. When she was so angry that my best option was to hide under my bed, her lower jaw migrated a few centimeters forward.'

On this occasion, the then four-year-old actress looked up at her mother and, she recalls, 'There was that soul-shattering underbite.'

On another, Panettiere recalls how her mother wasn't going to let something as trivial as a lost tooth derail her daughter's prospects at an audition.

Vogel, she says, told her: 'Give me the tooth you lost. And cross your fingers.'

She dutifully did and watched her mother 'squeeze a dab of superglue onto it,' before affixing it to a retainer with an acrylic 'palate.' Mother and daughter waited a few seconds until the glue dried before Panettiere, 'slipped it tentatively' into her mouth.

She writes: 'I closed my mouth and licked my top teeth. Then I opened my mouth and smiled.'

Back in May, a source close to the actress told the Daily Mail that the estrangement from her mother was 'worse than anyone knows'

In a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Panettiere said that she did 'not have the slightest clue as to how much I was paid

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she claimed that Vogel 'groomed' her to be a 'little soldier' when it came to performing, putting pressure on her to succeed.

Vogel herself was once a promising star in Hollywood as a former daytime TV player. She built a career as a soap opera actress with appearances on the ABC daytime drama Loving and the NBC soap Another World during the 1980s before marrying firefighter Alan 'Skip' Panettiere.

In a recent interview on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Panettiere alleged that her mother, 'stopped acting and decided to focus her entire life on creating a career' for her daughter.

Panettiere has publicly claimed that her mother told her from a young age that her career was crucial to supporting the family financially, with Panettiere's salary as a child being used to pay for household expenses like car payments and phone bills.

She alleged that by the age of 16, her earnings – stemming from movies like Remember the Titans, Raising Helen and the Bring It On sequel as well as lucrative ad contracts like the one she first booked with Neutrogena in 2005 – were used to purchase an apartment home for the family to live in.

'I was working hard, making money, and this money was going towards things that I wasn't privy to,' Panettiere said.

In a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Panettiere said that she did 'not have the slightest clue as to how much I was paid. I was never curious about how much until I was older.'

But when Panettiere grew older and began to feel that her mother's management of her career professionally was reportedly negatively impacting them personally, the cracks in their relationship began to show.

'Everything was business,' Panettiere said on the podcast, noting that this dynamic was 'incredibly uncomfortable' and resulted in a 'role reversal,' where she more often felt like a provider for her family than a child.

She said that she often viewed her mother as her 'boss' and not her parent.

'I became the confidante and the assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on and everything but her child,' Panettiere said, noting that while she was grateful for the ways in which her mother helped guide her career as a child star, she had 'never asked for it.'

'I desperately wanted to still feel like I had parents to lean on,' she said.

Panettiere alleged that Vogel once guilt-tripped her for the lack of time she was able to spend with Panettiere's little brother, Jansen, who died in 2023.

She claimed her mother said that it was because of the time she spent traveling as her manager, going so far as to tell her daughter: 'You're the reason why I'm missing my son growing up.'

'That was a punch in the gut,' Panettiere said.

Panettiere said she ended their professional relationship at the age of 19, while she was acting on the hit show Heroes.

'I said to her, "I don't want us to work together anymore. I just want you to be my mom."

'I remember being hopeful. But I also wasn't expecting the reaction that I got, which was, "You owe me."

'And that's all she said. And she walked out. It was disappointing to find out that it was money. The fact that she didn't care to have a relationship with me was a tough pill to swallow.'

Panettiere moved out of the family home at the age of 18, a decision she said she made for 'survival.'

'It was definitely survival. It was necessity,' Panettiere claimed. 'I need to get myself out of here.'

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Panettiere claimed that Vogel 'groomed' her to be a 'little soldier' when it came to performing

In a recent interview on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Panettiere shared that she often viewed her mother as her 'boss' and not her parent

Despite the difficult relationship she has with her mother, Panettiere said that she has a 'great relationship' with her father, Alan 'Skip' Panettiere, who has remarried, following the finalization of his divorce from Vogel in 2016.

Vogel hit back at Panettiere's claims that her mother forced her to work as a child actor, and alleged at the time that the resurfacing of her drama with her daughter is simply designed 'to sell books.'

While details of their estrangement are unknown, Vogel claimed that she chose to be estranged from Panettiere in light of their complicated dynamic.

Vogel spoke to the Daily Mail earlier this year and claimed that their estrangement was a 'recent occurrence,' around 'mid-September' 2025.

'We each are entitled to choose our path in life,' Vogel said. 'After 20 years of trauma, chaos, addictions [and] accusations, I felt I had no other option but to choose no contact.'

She added: 'There will forever be a lingering hope that she will find her own path to inner peace.'

During an interview with Us Weekly while promoting her book, Panettiere spoke about her estrangement from her mom, saying the door is open for a future reconciliation.

'Unfortunately, we don't have a relationship right now,' she said of her mom. 'But that doesn't mean that I don't leave the door open for the opportunity to present itself one day.'