Hayden Panettiere's 'TV dad' attacks paparazzi in lengthy tribute to actress after her death

Hayden Panettiere’s death has led to several actors speaking out about the treatment she faced as a child actor in Hollywood, with the directors of one of her last films speaking about the ‘dark energy’ surrounding her life.

Panettiere was found dead at 36 earlier this week, with 911 dispatch audio seeming to imply that she died of an overdose.

The celebrity actor was well known for several Hollywood roles, but the cult hit TV show Heroes was widely considered to be her best role since her child star performance in Remember the Titans.

Panettiere’s character Claire’s life was thrown out of whack when she discovered she had superpowers and couldn’t be harmed, with her on-screen dad played by TV veteran Jack Coleman.

Coleman has now spoken out about her death in a lengthy emotional tribute on Instagram where he attacked the paparazzi and fans online have said it left them ‘heartbroken’.

Coleman said she was ‘hunted’ and called out ‘misogynistic provocations’ during interviews

The 68-year-old spoke of the actor’s ‘prodigious talent’ that became clear when he acted opposite Panettiere on Heroes, saying he loved her since their first day shooting together, but was not shy about the mistreatment she faced at the hands of Hollywood press.

The actor said: “She was routinely asked obnoxious questions, mostly some version of ‘when are you going to go off the rails?’ Today, we’d recognize those questions for the misogynistic provocations they were.

“She was hunted. Everywhere she went, there were photographers with 300 millimeter lenses—the kind that can make even the most innocent activity look sinister.

“They were predatory. No one, especially a teenager, should be targeted that way.”

Coleman also praised her defence of animal rights and even how Panettiere stood up for his daughter Tess when she was being bullied, saying that he would ‘only wish you had been given that same protection’.

Coleman’s daughter Tess commented praising her dad and paying her own tribute to Hayden, saying: “I love you, Dad. I love you, Hayden. I’ll always remember the way she made me feel seen, heard, and protected, three things that meant everything at that age.

“She championed other people in a way she so often wasn't championed herself. That's one of the rarest qualities a person can have, and it's something I'll never forget. We love you.”

Hayden said her freedom was taken from her ‘basically overnight’ by paparazzi

The late actor spoke extensively about her experience with paparazzi, saying in her memoir This Is Me: “Outside of work, I was dealing with paparazzi for the first time and my freedom being taken away, basically overnight.”

Appearing on the Red Table Talk podcast she said: “Paparazzi would yell at me when I was younger, 'When are you gonna get your first DUI?' and it was always, 'When are you gonna fall on your face and get into alcohol and drugs?

“It was like, that was always gonna happen.”

The Heroes star continued to act throughout her career, and the director of one of her last films A Breed Apart, Griff Furst, issued his own statement where he acknowledged the ‘dark energy’ surrounding her.

He said in a video posted to Instagram that he had been ‘psyched’ to work with her but that when security picked her up from the airport they warned ‘something was off’.

He continued: “I didn’t think much about it, and so I left set and I walked over to greet her and her boyfriend Brian [Hickerson]. He opened the door. Hayden was incredibly sweet and gracious and excited to work, but she was not OK.

“I’m not going to get into the details of why that was, but having worked on over 100 movies and seeing just about everything, it was pretty clear that she wasn’t OK and the energy in her room was pretty dark.”

Panettiere’s cause of death remains pending, though a police report noted that Hickerson and his brother were present when she was pronounced dead by authorities.