Hayden Panettiere had suffered a devastating accident while riding a zebra that left her with years of pain before she died at the age of 36 of an apparent overdose.
The Heroes star had been just 14 when she filmed Racing Stripes in South Africa, a film about a zebra that dreams of racing in the Kentucky Derby.
She is understood to have only ridden a horse once or twice before filming, and spent six weeks learning to ride the animal like a jockey.
Panettiere then performed all of the stunts for the movie, including racing at speeds beside Thoroughbreds, she said in an interview at the time.
But at one point while filming she was then thrown from the zebra, suffering a concussion, severe whiplash and injuries to two vertebrae on her neck, the actress revealed in her memoir, ‘This Is Me: A Reckoning’, released earlier this year.
‘Over 20 years later, these injuries still bother me,’ she wrote in the memoir as she described how she would seek opioids whenever the injury flared back up.
‘The accident became much more than something that happened to Hayden on a movie set as a teenager,’ a source familiar with her struggles told Radar Online.
Another insider also noted that ‘Hayden’s addiction had many complicated elements and nobody should reduce it to one event.
Hayden Panettiere performed her own stunts in the 2005 film Racing Stripes, in which her character trains a zebra to race against horses
Panettiere had suffered years of pain in the aftermath. She is pictured using crutches in May, when she and her boyfriend Brian Hickerson traveled through Los Angeles International Airport
‘But the physical pain was real; she connected increased opioid use to her neck injury flaring up and it was something she was still dealing with decades after the accident.
‘It was what really prompted her downward spiral into drugs and depression.’
The former child star, known for her roles on the hit NBC series Heroes and the musical drama Nashville, had previously opened up about her struggles with addiction, which began when she was just 15 years old.
At the time, she claimed she started taking ‘happy pills’ in an effort to make her seem more ‘peppy’ during interviews.
Her addiction then became worse while she was battling postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Kaya in 2014.
Panettiere has said that in the days after giving birth, she felt ‘nothing’ when looking at her young daughter – prompting her to turn to drinking.
She said: ‘I turned to wine, which ultimately ended up leading to an alcohol dependency. It was how I would get through each day.’
Panettiere has long spoken out about her drug and alcohol addiction. She said it became worse after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, in 2014
Although she underwent treatment, Panettiere felt the ‘root cause’ of her drinking, the depression, was not addressed.
‘I wish more people had known what it was at the time. Maybe I wouldn’t have waited so long to get help,’ she said.
She ultimately underwent an eight-month stint at a rehab facility in 2020, revealing in her memoir how a doctor told her she would be dead within five years if she did not stop drinking.
It was during that rehab stint that she said she stopped ‘running from myself’ and started to face her hardships.
‘If you stay in rehab more than a few weeks, you have lots of time to be bored,’ the actress wrote in her New York Times bestselling memoir.
‘When you’re sitting with your feelings, stone cold sober, there’s little room for denial.
‘But in those long, empty spaces, you start to grow.’
Still, she noted in a 2022 interview that ‘it’s an everyday battle’ to remain sober.
Panettiere underwent an eight-month rehab stint in 2020, and said she had remained sober ever since. She is pictured at the premiere of Scream VI in March 2023
The Heroes star is pictured with her one-time co-star, the late Michelle Trachtenberg, in 2011
Panettiere was pronounced dead at the scene of an Airbnb in Greenville, South Carolina, on Sunday.
Authorities have not yet released a cause of death, but in audio of a 911 call made at 1.51pm Sunday, a female dispatcher described the actress as suffering a ‘cardiac arrest.’
A few moments later, a male dispatcher could be heard saying that Panettiere had suffered a suspected overdose at the home.
The actress, who was due to turn 37 this Friday, was pronounced dead at the scene at 2.32pm, just over 40 minutes after the first 911 call was made. Her ex, Brian Hickerson, and his brother, Zach, were in the apartment when she died, according to a police report released on Tuesday.
The Greenville County Coroner’s Office has since completed the star’s autopsy, with the coroner telling the Daily Mail that ‘no signs of trauma were discovered that would have contributed to the death.’
Further investigations will now take place to establish her cause of death, with chief deputy coroner Shelton England telling the Daily Mail that it was too early to discuss the drug overdose theory.
