This article first appeared in Malta Today

Actress and singer Hayden Panettiere died last Sunday in her prime, at the age of 36. She went into cardiac arrest, after a possible overdose, although this has not yet been confirmed.

Country & western icon Dolly Parton died on Tuesday at the age of 80, after a very private battle with cancer.

Both deaths were shocking in different ways; Hayden because she was still so young and Dolly because well, we foolishly thought she was indestructible and would always be there.

They led very different lives and even in death they were treated differently by the media.  The accolades pouring in for Dolly are truly merited because she was an exceptional human being who rose out of poverty, achieved stardom and used her wealth to do nothing but good. She was married to the love of her life for 59 years and although they never had children, she was philosophical about it: “I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library, because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done.” 

Funding everything from children’s libraries to a Covid vaccine, her generosity created a ripple effect which will continue to be felt for generations. Everyone who ever worked with her showered her with praise; she was one of those rare creatures whom everyone seemed to love. That is why I found it so distasteful and tacky that the very next day some news outlets were already speculating about who would inherit her fortune, as if a person’s worth and value as a human being can be reduced to the possessions and bank accounts they leave behind.  

Another aspect of Dolly’s personality which was so admirable was how savvy she was when it came to her fame. She used publicity but did not let it use her, and in business she was often under-estimated because of her bimbo look.  “I look like a woman, but I think like a man, and in this business it’s helped me out a lot,” was another of her famous sayings.  She had a quiet confidence in herself which came through in the numerous interviews she gave along the years, when she often pulled the rug from under the surprised interviewer’s feet.

Hayden’s life, which was cut so tragically short, was not as fortunate. This is the inexplicable irony of life when one person’s trajectory can be so vastly different to another’s.  On the surface she seemed to have it all: much like Dolly she was both beautiful and talented. However, she was not born into poverty but into a comfortable middle class family. Her mother was a ‘stage mom’ who put her daughter into commercials at the age of 11 months. By the time she was 5 years old she had appeared in 50 commercials. Her mother continued to be her manager until Hayden ended their professional relationship at the age of 19.  Despite appearing in a string of hit TV shows, behind the scenes Hayden was very unhappy. She struggled with addiction and substance abuse, and had a child at 25 after which she suffered from severe postpartum depression. Due to her inability to care for her daughter, she eventually granted the father, Wladimir Klitschko, full custody.

In her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” she wrote about all this as well as the repercussions of being a child star, and the fraught relationship with her mother.  Watching her interview with Gayle King while she was on her book tour this year, she came across as broken. It was painful to watch as the interviewer kept pressing her with questions and she fought back tears. In 2023, she lost her younger brother Jansen who died from an enlarged heart and in the interview she could barely get the words out as she spoke about how much she misses him.  Other interviews which have resurfaced likewise show a young woman who still grapples with her grief and loss, and who had not yet found her peace. At the time of her death, Hayden and her mother were still estranged because Hayden had gone back to her controlling boyfriend, Brian Hickerson.

Following Hayden’s death, the media have focussed on all of the troubling issues which plagued her throughout her short life, but two things have particularly stood out. First, whether it is wise to put children into show business at such a tender age in the first place.  Is it even possible to handle the weirdness of fame and constant attention when one has not yet fully developed emotionally and psychologically?  It is extremely difficult for adolescents to develop a strong sense of self in the best of circumstances, let alone when one throws constant public scrutiny into the mix.  The second issue revolves around parents who develop a ‘business’ relationship with their offspring.  There are countless examples of this, from the most famous stage mother of them all Kris Jenner who has turned the Kardashians/Jenners into money-making machines…to parents in the sports world like Steffi Graf’s father who mismanaged her money, and ended up serving time for tax evasion.  Of course, there are cases where children who have grown up in this kind of transactional environment with their own parents emerge unscathed on the other side into adulthood – but not always. 

Finally, and most crucially, one cannot ignore the undeniably difficult decision which Hayden made in 2018 to give up her daughter because it was the best thing for her.  Speaking about the custody battle she said, “When I saw her in the environment over there (Ukraine) and the support system that she had, I said to myself, ‘If I fight… it’s going to permanently damage my child….Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, and it’s hard to describe the layers of emotion, including sadness, resentment, and anger, I’ve felt because of it.”

She was heavily criticised at the time, but for a mother to give up her child because it is in the child’s best interests, must be the most selfless act I can think of.  None of us can presume to know what happened in the last few hours of Hayden’s life, but despite seeming to “have it all”, losing her child was probably the one gaping void in her life which could never be filled.  

I also wonder whether writing a memoir and doing the talk show/podcast circuit to promote the book might have further plunged her into a deeper depression.  I know that there is a trend for people to “speak their truth” and go public with their lives, but each time she was interviewed she was re-opening old wounds and re-living the trauma of past events. One of her last interviews was with Jay Shetty three months ago and it is heartbreaking to watch. What happens after the cameras are switched off and you have to go home to once again, face your demons?  Can such full public disclosure ever provide real healing or is rehashing and dwelling on the past simply like picking away at a scab, each time drawing fresh blood?  After a lifetime lived in the relentless public eye, always a target of entertainment gossip, perhaps what she really needed to heal was less publicity, and not more.