“It’s a strange small club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry makes us feel.”

Anna Paquin slams Hollywood for its treatment of ‘pre-sexualized’ child stars after Hayden Panettiere’s death

“It’s a strange small club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry makes us feel.”

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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August 21, 2026 8:28 p.m. ET

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Anna Paquin; Hayden Panettiere. Credit:

Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty; Nina Westervelt/Variety via Getty

- Anna Paquin shared a statement condemning Hollywood’s treatment of “pre-sexualized female, child ‘stars.’”

- She paid tribute Hayden Panettiere, who died at 36 on Sunday, as well as Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase.

- “You are worthy of support no matter how our industry makes us feel,” she wrote.

Anna Paquin is speaking out about Hollywood’s treatment of young women.

The *True Blood* actress shared a statement on Instagram on Friday after Hayden Panettiere‘s untimely death at 36 on Sunday. Paquin used the opportunity to highlight how young actresses frequently go unsupported in the entertainment industry, and how early trauma can lead to major challenges throughout their adult lives.

“It’s not a coincidence that so many former, specifically pre-sexualized female, child ‘stars’ have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends,” Paquin wrote. “We were not as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper, as we are supposed to be.”

Paquin, who became the second-youngest Best Supporting Actress winner at the Oscars at age 11 in 1994, mourned the deaths of Panettiere; Michelle Trachtenberg, who died at 39 in February 2025; and Daveigh Chase, who died at 35 from AIDS in June.

Anna Paquin in New York City on April 3, 2024.

Theo Wargo/Getty

“RIP HP, MT, DC and too many others,” she wrote. “It’s a strange small club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry makes us feel.”

Paquin, who appeared in *Scream 4* alongside Panettiere, ended her statement with an invitation for other former child stars to reach out to her for support. “Literally DM me. I believe you and I will stand by your side,” she wrote. “You aren’t alone. Let’s have each other’s backs. It might make public disclosure less terrifying.”

Paquin’s post came just a few hours after a similar statement from Rose McGowan, who appeared in the original *Scream* film in 1996 and began her career as a child model.

“Rest in Power Hayden Paniettiere [sic],” she wrote on Instagram. “Don’t put kids in show business. None of this is normal. May her spirit be free of those who orchestrated.”

Hayden Panettiere and what the Teen Choice Awards told us about a generation

Brother of Hayden Panettiere’s boyfriend shares detailed account of her final day, resuscitation attempt

On Wednesday, *Elle* published an essay by *Even Stevens* actress Christy Carlson Romano comparing early stardom to the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

“Early fame is like CTE. Not as a diagnosis. As a way of thinking about repeated impact,” Romano wrote. “We now have language for youth sports: protocols, helmets, parents worried about concussions. But we have almost no language for what happens when stress, scrutiny, rejection, adult pressure, and the collapse of privacy become the architecture of a childhood.”

She continued, “We put youth athletes in helmets and pads. We invented entire sciences around protecting them from long-term damage. Why can’t we pad the children paid to make the world smile?”

Hayden Panettiere in ‘Scream 4’.

Romano added, “I am thinking of Hayden, her daughter, the people who loved her in real life—not as a headline, not as a symbol. I am thinking of my own daughter still upstairs, still crawling into my bed afraid of the dark, and how badly I want her to grow up in a world where children are not asked to become consumable before they become whole.”

She concluded the essay, “We need to stop calling the truth bitterness just because it interrupts nostalgia. And we need to stop assuming former child performers are fine because they look pretty, sound grateful, book a job, and smile on cue. Some of them are not unscathed. Some of them are simply still performing.”

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Panettiere detailed the turmoil of adolescent fame in her recent memoir *This Is Me: A Reckoning*. In the book, she said that she “suffered from body dysmorphia for years” after reading a headline about her “cellulite” as a teenager. She also said that she was given a “happy pill” by a former publicist when she was 16, describing the substance as “the gateway drug that ushered me toward the good of pharmaceuticals and the downfall of addiction.”

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