Julia Jacobs and Matt Stevens
This spring, Hayden Panettiere began a book tour at a Barnes & Noble in New York City, greeting fans with a bright smile before steeling herself for a discussion about a memoir that chronicles the trials of her life, including struggles with drug and alcohol addiction and an abusive ex-boyfriend.
Before the event in May, the bookstore was given a specific instruction, according to two people with direct knowledge of the tour: Do not let in a man named Brian Hickerson.
Hickerson was the former boyfriend Panettiere had discussed at length in her memoir, which recounted his violence against her that had resulted in three arrests and a stint in jail.
They eventually resumed a tumultuous on-and-off relationship. But by the time of the book tour, she was accompanied by private security with clear instructions to keep him away, according to the two people.
“I needed an incredible amount of support and backup in order to make sure that there was no way for him to find his way back in,” Panettiere said on a podcast in May.
Three months later, Hickerson was present when she was pronounced dead in an apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina. Police have said there were no signs of foul play, and neither Hickerson nor his brother Zach, who are listed in a police report as having called 911, have been accused of being involved in her death.
The county coroner’s office said Panettiere, 36, went into cardiac arrest, which is being investigated as an apparent drug overdose.
As authorities search for clarity, Hickerson will be a key source of information as someone familiar with the actor’s final hours. When the police arrived, he showed an officer a bag of her medications, according to the redacted police report.
In a statement Thursday, lawyers for Hickerson said: “Hayden’s death remains under investigation, and it is important to allow that investigation to proceed. As has been publicly reported, police confirmed there were no signs of foul play.”
The lawyers declined to comment on the accounts of Hickerson’s relationship with Panettiere included in this article.
Hickerson was a persistent source of conflict in the final year of a life weighed down by grief, addiction, agoraphobia and physical pain that sometimes made it difficult for Panettiere to walk. Some family and friends were eager for Panettiere to separate from Hickerson for good. At times, she would wall herself off from them when she and Hickerson were together.
Lesley Vogel, Panettiere’s mother, said that about a year ago, she spent time in Los Angeles to help her daughter during a low point.
“She was in pain,” Vogel said. “She was afraid. She couldn’t physically function properly.”
Vogel, who had a fraught and sometimes distant relationship with Panettiere, said she took her daughter to doctors and tried massage and acupuncture in hopes of relieving a feeling of “pins and needles” in her lower extremities that made it difficult to walk. The exact cause was unclear, but Panettiere wondered if the condition had something to do with injuries she incurred on film sets when she was young.
Marnie Alton, a fitness expert who worked with Panettiere starting in 2024, said she was working hard both physically, to reclaim her strength, and mentally, to move away from cycles of self-judgment.
“She was a badass,” Alton said. “She was really smart. She kept fighting for her body because she felt like, ‘If I can get my strength back, I can get myself back.’”
Sometimes, Alton said, Hickerson attended their sessions, filming and taking photos to document the journey.
Vogel said she was alarmed when she learned that Hickerson, who filed for bankruptcy in 2022, had pawned some of Panettiere’s belongings, including a vintage guitar. She said her daughter was shocked when she found out that some of her possessions were in his storage unit. One of the people who was given anonymity to speak with The New York Times confirmed that Hickerson had pawned some of the actor’s items.
Eventually, Vogel said, she and her daughter had a falling out, in part over the mother’s attempts to keep Hickerson out of Panettiere’s life and finances.
Panettiere’s book recounted Vogel as another source of intense pressure — someone who, she felt, was more interested in being a business manager than a mother.
Vogel, who said she had always sought to protect her daughter, had helped oversee her acting career from when she was eight months old until she was 19, a stretch that included projects such as Remember the Titans, a Bring It On sequel and some of her work on Heroes.
When Panettiere died, they had been estranged for months.
“She was courageous, she was a fighter,” Vogel said, “but deep down inside, I think Hayden was extremely vulnerable.”
In 2018, when Panettiere met Hickerson, she had recently been crushed by postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, which spiralled into dependence on alcohol and opioids.
“You’re grasping for anything, anything to make you feel happy,” she told People magazine.
She entered treatment for addiction but soon began drinking again. Facing mental anguish and a battle to stay sober, Panettiere agreed to give her ex-boyfriend Wladimir Klitschko, the heavyweight boxer, custody of their daughter.
Within months, her whirlwind romance with Hickerson was marred by arguments that led to drunken attacks, she said in her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.
She began sharing details about the extent of his abuse with law enforcement in Los Angeles in 2020, and he was arrested on domestic violence charges. After pleading no contest to two felony counts of injuring Panettiere, Hickerson was sentenced to 45 days in jail, several years of probation and domestic violence classes.
“You never lay hands on a woman — bottom line,” Hickerson said in an interview with TMZ in May, in which he expressed regret for the abuse Panettiere recounted in her memoir.
He was found in violation of his probation conditions in 2022, after he and Panettiere were filmed in a brawl with other patrons outside the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood, California, and ordered to attend weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
A few months after the brawl, Hickerson, a former landscaper, filed for bankruptcy in California. Court papers listed him as having no income, $US6,350 ($8,863) in his checking accounts and more than $59,000 in debt. He listed his employer’s address as Panettiere’s condo.
At some point, Panettiere hired Hickerson as her assistant, further entangling the two. His LinkedIn profile describes him as an executive assistant for a “high-profile confidential client,” listing duties that include providing “24/7 on-call support,” responding to emails and caring for two dogs.
Panettiere largely withdrew from the public eye after the sudden death of her younger brother in 2023, which the family said was from an enlarged heart and aortic valve complications. After she had reemerged, an interview with People drew tabloid headlines pointing to her slower, sometimes slurred speech.
In an Instagram post, Panettiere explained that she had been sleep-deprived and remained grief-stricken. “Whether or not I am on medication is none of anyone’s business and is between me and my doctor,” she wrote.
By early 2025, Panettiere had regained her footing. She was set to star in and executive produce a horror movie, Sleepwalker, in which she played a mother haunted by a car crash that killed her daughter and left her abusive husband in a coma.
Brandon Auman, the movie’s director, said in an email that the production was a packed 15-day shoot in the dead of winter in Rhode Island, and that Panettiere seemed in top form — focused, prepared and healthy.
“We were in extreme cold and wind, and she was running around without complaint in a T-shirt, robe and slippers for several scenes,” he said. “It was rough, but she was an absolute trouper.”
After the production, according to her memoir, she spent a few months with her father and stepmother in Rockland County, New York, trying to rest after a brutal few years.
In finishing her memoir, she spent hours on the phone telling a co-author about her joys and sorrows. In the book’s final pages, Panettiere described the process as one of “radical acceptance” — a term she learned in mental health and addiction treatment.
After a busy media tour surrounding the book’s release in May — including appearances on The View and interviews with Gayle King and Tamron Hall — Panettiere had a bit of a lull. But she had plans on the horizon.
She intended to return to acting, write a TV series and visit her 11-year-old daughter, whom she missed greatly, in Europe. On Friday, she would have celebrated her 37th birthday.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
