Hayden Panettiere and Wladimir Klitschko split in 2018, but it was always clear that there remained love and respect between the two.
Such was the case tonight when former heavyweight champion Klitschko spoke out for the first time about the untimely death of the 36-year-old Heroes actress, with whom he shared daughter Kaya.
“Hayden’s tragic death saddens me deeply,” wrote Klitschko, who lives in Ukraine, in a social media post. “She left this world far too soon. Hayden was, although no longer my partner, an important part of my life and the mother of our daughter, Kaya. She built an incredible career through immense talent, while also facing the darker sides of a very demanding industry. Nothing will erase the times we shared or the place she had in our lives.”
The duo was together on and off from 2008 to 2018. They were engaged in 2013, and in 2014 Kaya was born. Panettiere had been open about her struggles with depression and addiction, the latter of which began when she was given “happy pills” at the age of 15. She got Heroes at 16, and graduated to drinking and occasionally taking opioids.
Kaya’s birth in 2014 brought postpartum depression, which the actress also spoke about publicly.
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Her relationship with Klitschko ended after she began drinking again. “He didn’t want to be around me,” she said. “I didn’t want to be around me. But with the opiates and alcohol I was doing anything to make me feel happy for a moment. Then I’d feel worse than I did before. I was in a cycle of self-destruction.”
In 2018, still battling addiction while shooting Nashville, Panettiere sent Kaya to Ukraine for what she believed to be a visit. It turned out to be an intervention, of sorts.
“I thought she was going over to visit him like she always did,” the actress revealed on Red Table Talk in 2022. “[Kaya] would go back and forth from me in Nashville and Ukraine, and then once she was over there, it was immediately, ‘I want full custody of her,’ which was a shock to me.”
She continued: “It was very upsetting signing those papers to give him full custody. It was like the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever, ever had to do in my life.”
Even after their breakup and Kaya’s move, the trio traveled together and supported each other. In 2022, Panettiere wished her former fiancé a happy birthday on social media, calling him a “wonderful man.”
The appreciation, it seems, is mutual.
“To our daughter Kaya,” Klitschko wrote today, “I will always speak of her mother with respect and make sure she remembers the person she was.”
He ended with, “Rest easy, Hayden. May you find eternal peace.”
