Anna Paquin, Christy Carlson Romano and Melissa Gilbert are calling on Hollywood to protect child actors following the deaths of Hayden Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase.
Panettiere’s death at age 36 last Sunday prompted the three actresses, who were child stars themselves, to take their concerns public. Trachtenberg died at 39 in February 2025, while Chase died in July at age 35.
“It’s not a coincidence that so many former, specifically pre-sexualized female, child ‘stars’ have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends. We were not as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper, as we are supposed to be,” Paquin wrote on Instagram Friday. She rose to fame at 11 years old with her film debut in 1993’s The Piano, which earned her an Oscar for best supporting actress.
“RIP HP, MT, DC and too many others. It’s a strange small club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry makes us feel,” Paquin continued. “Literally DM me. I believe you and I will stand by your side. You aren’t alone. Let’s have each other’s backs. It might make public disclosure less terrifying.”
The True Blood alum added in a separate post, “One more thing– As an adult I’ve had the pleasure of working on productions where the welfare and mental health of young performers was handled incredibly carefully. Especially around material that was intense. It is possible to holistically look after the kids on set and tell complex and sometimes upsetting stories. It just has to be the top priority of the production.”
Earlier in the week, Elle published an essay by Romano — who appeared in 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You as a child before becoming a teen Disney star with her role in Even Stevens and voicing Kim Possible — where she compared child stardom to the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
“The former child actor exists in a category the world does not know how to hold. We are children when the public wants to feel protective of us, professionals when the industry wants to profit from us, and spoiled celebrities when we eventually show symptoms of having been both,” Romano wrote in part. “Early fame is like CTE. Not as a diagnosis. As a way of thinking about repeated impact. 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 added, “Young performers are still treated as exceptions. Lucky exceptions. Cute exceptions. Talented exceptions. Exceptions whose labor powers one of the most profitable storytelling machines in the world, while their mental needs are treated as inconvenient or irrelevant. Social work be damned.”
Gilbert also shared a lengthy post on Substack Saturday, where she asked, “Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?” Gilbert landed her breakout role at just nine years old, playing Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little House on the Prairie from 1974 to 1983.
“I did not know Hayden personally and only worked briefly with Mishy and Daveigh. It feels personal because I was them,” Gilbert wrote. “We are all members of the same tribe; Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current. When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong. We all know the stories of how the entertainment industry uses, abuses, exploits and then throws away it’s youngest, but for some reason, this trend is getting worse.”
She later added, “Where is our Union in all of this? Where is the collective outrage? Where are the regulations? Where is the protection of privacy?”
“It really seems like no one cares enough to enact real change. At least, not until the next death and everyone talks about how sad they are and how we must do something and then they forget and get on with their lives until it happens again and again and again,” Gilbert continued. “Yes, addiction is a real disease. Family dysfunction is real. PTSD is real. In actors, all those things are assets. They enable us to access emotion and share it with an audience. But when it comes through children, it should be treated tenderly, protectively, respectfully and in a way that is as limited as possible.”
Gilbert’s post comes as her husband, Timothy Busfield, awaits trial in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after being accused of child sex abuse on the set of the former Fox/Warner Bros. Television series The Cleaning Lady. Gilbert has defended Busfield, who has denied the allegations.
Panettiere started working in Hollywood at a young age, appearing in the soap opera One Life to Live at just four years old before starring in 2000’s Remember the Titans at 10, among other projects. As for Trachtenberg, she appeared in the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete as a child, as well as 1996’s Harriet the Spy and 1999’s Inspector Gadget. Chase was known for voicing Lilo in 2002’s Lilo & Stitch when she was younger as well as starring in the 2002 horror film The Ring.
