Hayden Panettiere made her final onscreen appearance in ‘Sleepwalker’ alongside Justin Chatwin, Beverly D’Angelo and Mischa Barton
Credit: Michael Tullberg/Getty; Jon Kopaloff/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Justin Chatwin, who costarred with Hayden Panettiere in her final movie before she died suddenly at 36 on Aug. 16, tells PEOPLE the actress appeared to be “really lonely” when they filmed Sleepwalker together
- Panettiere’s final movie Sleepwalker saw her portray a woman struggling with the loss of her daughter following a tragic car crash
- The actress was found unresponsive in Greenville, South Carolina on Aug. 16
Justin Chatwin, who costarred with Hayden Panettiere in her final movie role before her sudden death at 36, is opening up about his experience working with her.
One day after Panettiere’s death, Chatwin tells PEOPLE that he and Panettiere crossed paths while she was making her star turn in the superhero drama Heroes and reconnected decades later for Sleepwalker, a psychological thriller filmed in winter 2025 and released in January. In the movie, Panettiere played a woman struggling with the loss of her daughter following a tragic car crash.
“We hit it off great and it was an awesome shoot, but it was about domestic abuse and it was subject matter that may have hit close to home, because she did mention it. She opened up to me about a lot of things,” Chatwin says.
In real life, Panettiere was a mother to her daughter Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, 11, whom she shared with her ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko. In 2018, Panettiere gave full custody of Kaya to Klitschko while she struggled with addiction and postpartum depression.
Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty
“Hayden seemed different when I met her this time than when I met her in the early years,” Chatwin says. “I’ve been sober for 15 years, so I know this world of addiction, and Hollywood — it takes, and it takes from youth.”
Panettiere made a major return to screen acting in 2023 when she starred in Scream VI, which amounted to her first onscreen appearance since the ABC series Nashville wrapped in 2018. This past May, she published a memoir titled This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she came out as bisexual and opened up about her struggles with addiction and traumatic experiences during her teenage years.
After Scream VI, Panettiere appeared in three more movies — including Sleepwalker — and lent her voice to the video game Until Dawn prior to her death. “I could tell she was struggling, and I was like, ‘I don’t think it’s this movie,’” Chatwin says. “There’s a handful of women that I’ve worked with that I really liked, and I really loved working with her, but I also know that she was really lonely.”
Chatwin tells PEOPLE that Panettiere told him about her experience with going to rehab and the “struggles that she’s had with trauma” early in the process of making Sleepwalker.
“I’m sure that everyone else is going to say ‘Oh, she’s amazing. She’s such a sweet person on set,’ because she was,” he adds. “But we’re trained to be actors, so we’re acting on set, you know? And she is sweet. She had a beautiful heart. But we’re trained to be on, and I really liked spending time with her because she took that off, and she was authentic with me about her life and she opened up about her struggles with addiction. And who knows where it comes from? Does it come from Hollywood? Does it come from home? And a lot of times, it’s both.”
Brandon Auman, the filmmaker who wrote and directed Sleepwalker, told PEOPLE in a statement on Aug. 17 that he is “completely gutted over Hayden’s passing.”
“She was such a bright, open, numinous spirit. I keep thinking back to our time on set and how much she taught me,” Auman wrote. “She was open and honest about the last few years of her life and how it related to her character. I’m keeping those conversations private, but I was struck by how complex and deeply introspective she was. She lived a dozen lives in one short beautiful life. I’ll miss her forever.”
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Chatwin adds that Panettiere’s struggles with addiction during her career in Hollywood and apparent overdose do not come in a vacuum.
“I felt sad this morning, but I feel angry. Because I want to point a finger at something for this, and it keeps happening,” he says. “She was delightful and super open and we had a great time together and I’m just saddened that another one got taken down. It’s not the first, you know, and it’s yearly, dude, and it’s like no one’s really addressing it.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.
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