Jack Coleman is remembering Hayden Panettiere not only as the actress who played his daughter on Heroes, but as a teenager whose extraordinary talent and rapid rise to fame exposed her to pressures he believes no young performer should have faced.
Coleman, who played Noah Bennet opposite Panettiere’s Claire Bennet on the NBC drama, shared an emotional tribute after her death at 36. He recalled meeting her while filming the Heroes pilot, when she greeted him by shouting “daddy” and throwing her arms around him.
That first meeting became the start of an affectionate offscreen relationship. Panettiere called Coleman “daddio,” while he nicknamed her “Haydini” because, as he put it, “she was a magician,” according to Entertainment Weekly’s report on his tribute.
But Coleman’s memories also turned to the darker side of Panettiere’s rise. He described watching a 16-year-old become the target of invasive photographers and provocative questions as her public profile exploded, leaving him with anger over how little protection she received.
Coleman Knew She Was an Extraordinary Actor at 16
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Coleman said he recognized Panettiere’s unusual ability almost immediately. During an early scene, he noticed that a tear rolled down her cheek on exactly the same line through repeated takes. He complimented what he assumed was an impressive acting technique.
Panettiere corrected him. “It’s not technique,” Coleman recalled her saying. “I’m not a trained seal. I feel it and the tears just happen to come at that moment.” “She was 16,” Coleman added.
Her abilities went beyond emotional scenes. Coleman remembered Panettiere bringing “joy” to the Heroes set and possessing a photographic memory that impressed the cast and crew. He called her a “tiny colossus who loved to laugh” and said the bright personality viewers saw was not something she manufactured for cameras. “That shining face, that megawatt smile, that wasn’t just for the camera,” he wrote. “That was her. She glowed.”
He Says Fame Quickly Made Panettiere a Target
Heroes premiered in 2006 and quickly turned Panettiere into one of the show’s most recognizable stars. Coleman said that within a year she had reached No. 1 on IMDbPro’s STARmeter ranking, but the attention accompanying that rise was not always celebratory.
He remembered Panettiere being routinely asked questions that amounted to, “When are you going to go off the rails?” “Today, we’d recognize those questions for the misogynistic provocations they were,” Coleman wrote.
The attention extended beyond interviews. PEOPLE reports that Coleman described Panettiere as being “hunted” by paparazzi carrying long lenses capable, in his view, of making innocent activity appear sinister. He recalled photographers hiding in bushes and driving across neighboring lawns in pursuit of pictures. “They were predatory,” Coleman wrote. “No one, especially a teenager, should be targeted that way.”
‘Blessed and Cursed’ Was About How Deeply She Felt Things
Coleman’s tribute became especially personal when he tried to describe the quality he believed made Panettiere both a gifted performer and unusually vulnerable. “Today I’m filled with sorrow and regret. And anger,” he wrote. “But that’s for another time.”
Instead, he said he wanted to remember “an extraordinary young woman who was blessed and cursed.” “She was vulnerable. She felt everything,” Coleman continued. “It made her a remarkable actor and susceptible to the heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”
Her Animal Advocacy Continued Until Weeks Before Her Death
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Coleman also remembered Panettiere for acts of kindness that had nothing to do with acting. He recalled how she supported his daughter Tess when she was being bullied and singled out her long-standing commitment to animal welfare. That advocacy continued until shortly before her death.
PETA released a new campaign featuring Panettiere after she died, saying it had been filmed only two weeks earlier. In the campaign, she used the image of being confined to a bathtub to argue against keeping dolphins and whales in small tanks at marine parks.
Panettiere’s animal activism stretched back years. She participated in efforts opposing dolphin hunts in Taiji, Japan, and appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove. PETA also recalled her campaigning against marine-mammal captivity and intervening when she believed animals were being mistreated.
Coleman remembered that courage explicitly. He praised “your commitment to animal welfare and the courage to put yourself in harm’s way to protect them,” before adding one of the most painful lines in his tribute: “I only wish you had been given that same protection.”