IN FRAME: Mourning Hayden Panettiere and other stars gone too soon

I remember exactly where I was when Luke Perry died: standing in line for coffee in a Barnes and Noble cafe.

Perry had a stroke earlier that day and was in the hospital, in critical condition. I was trying to hold onto hope that he’d pull through, but something inside of me knew he wouldn’t.

My sister showed me the breaking news alert as I was handed my coffee. Luke Perry passed away. He was 52 years old.

I don’t know why his death hit me as hard as it did. I think it’s because he was one of those people I expected to always be around, and it’s kind of still incomprehensible that he’s not anymore.

Perry, most famous for playing Dylan McKay on “Beverly Hills, 90210” and later Archie Andrews’ father, Fred, on CW’s “Riverdale,” was a comforting, gentle presence onscreen and the world seems dimmer without him in it.

The entertainment world lost another icon last week when, just days shy of her 37th birthday, Hayden Panettiere, star of teen movies like “Ice Princess” and “Bring it On: All of Nothing” as well as the TV shows “Heroes” and “Nashville,” suffered cardiac arrest and died in South Carolina.

Panettiere’s death was preceded by a string of other untimely deaths in Hollywood, like that of Daveigh Chase, the voice of Lilo in “Lilo and Stitch” and Chihiro in the American dub of “Spirited Away.” She died in June at the age of 35 after a long battle with addiction.

I hear Daveigh’s voice in my head when I think of going to the movies as a kid. Watching “Spirited Away” for the first time when I was six was such a magical, emotional experience.

Watching Hayden Panettiere’s performance as Claire Bennet in “Heroes” was a formative experience for both my sister and me.

We were obsessed with that show. We lived and breathed it. So much so that we wrote our own fan fiction about it and regularly acted out scenes we wrote after school. “Save the cheerleader, save the world,” will forever echo in my mind.

Hayden Panettiere was like the soundtrack of my teenage years, quite literally because I can’t think about 2005 without hearing “I Fly” from “Ice Princess” in my head. I often think about the pastal colored poncho she wore in that one scene, which was truly the height of fashion at the time.

I used to roller skate in my basement and pretend like I was ice skating like they did in that movie. Even now, when I actually do go ice skating, I think about “Ice Princess.”

Watching clips of that movie recently has taken me back to such a specific time in my life, when I had a Bratz telephone and an off-brand MP3 player and listened to Disney Mania CDs on repeat. Back when nothing at all had happened to me yet, and I lived vicariously through the lives of the young women I watched on screen.

It’s especially depressing because the star of that movie is gone now, too. Michelle Trachtenberg, who also played Buffy’s younger sister Dawn on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Georgiana Sparks on “Gossip Girl,” died on Feb. 26, 2025, at the age of 39.

Dawn has always been such a special character to me because she’s Buffy’s little sister. And I have a little sister.

By the way, Anthony Stewart Head is gone too. So is Nicholas Brendon.

And while not every death of a beloved celebrity comes too soon and with so much regret, a lot of them do. Hayden’s certainly does.

And every time we lose another bright light like her, someone who spoke openly about the struggles she endured in Hollywood, I am forced to reckon with an inherently exploitative, dangerous, and soul-sucking machine that creates the thing I love more than anything else: movies.

What am I supposed to do with that? What good are the things we make if the system that made those things destroys us in the end?

Something actor Ethan Hawke said on the importance of human creativity comes to mind: “[…] most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live, and they’re really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anyone’s poems — until their father dies; they go to a funeral; you lose a child; someone breaks your heart. And all of a sudden, you’re desperate for making sense out of this life.”

So, I think I will choose to honor Hayden and all the other talented performers lost far too soon, by celebrating the work they did and the art they left us with.

It is not enough. But it’s all I got.

In Frame is a weekly arts and entertainment column focusing on everything from pop culture and new movie releases to the local arts and culture found right here in NEPA. News reporter Margaret Roarty contributes to this column.

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