Melissa Gilbert is calling on entertainment unions to "enact real change" for child actors following the death of Hayden Panettiere, publishing a Substack essay on Saturday that says she never knew Panettiere personally but that her death still feels "so personal to me" as a former child performer herself.
"How is it possible that no one in the mainstream media has picked up on this?" the Little House on the Prairie alum wrote. "Within one year, Michelle Trachtenberg, Daveigh Chase and Hayden Panettiere have died. DIED! Three former female child actors of the same generation are gone. Tragically, heartbreakingly, agonizingly too soon."
Gilbert, who said she worked with both Trachtenberg and Chase before their deaths, added: "They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, 'WHY?' Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?" She went on to write, "It feels personal because I was them. … We are all members of the same tribe; Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current. When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong."
Gilbert connected what she described as a pattern of addiction and mental health struggles among former child stars to the rise of cell phones and their effect on media coverage. "Where is our Union in all of this? Where is the collective outrage? Where are the regulations? Where is the protection of privacy?" she asked, adding that "it really seems like no one cares enough to enact real change. At least, not until the next death and everyone talks about how sad they are and how we must do something and then they forget and get on with their lives until it happens again and again and again."
She closed the essay by invoking Panettiere's daughter: "All I know is something has got to be done. I have this image in my mind of Hayden's little girl who will now grow up without her Mama. She is eleven years old. That's the same age I was when my father died. And now I am weeping as I type this and I just want to scream from the rooftops, 'ENOUGH!'"
The essay comes as Gilbert's husband, Timothy Busfield, awaits trial in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after two boys accused him of child sexual abuse during production on The Cleaning Lady.
Panettiere made her first onscreen appearance at 11 months old in a Playskool toy commercial before breaking out in Disney's Remember the Titans (2000). She went on to appear in Ally McBeal (2002), Raising Helen (2004), Tiger Cruise (2004), Racing Stripes (2005), Ice Princess (2005), Malcolm in the Middle (2003-'05) and Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006), all before turning 18. Her rep confirmed her death at age 36 to Deadline on Monday, as police in Greenville, South Carolina said no foul play was initially suspected, with an initial autopsy finding no signs of trauma.
Photo: President (1981-1989 : Reagan). White House Photographic Office. 1981-1989, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
