Hayden Panettiere, Kairi and Until Dawn Voice, Dies at 36

Tane Wharekura17/08/2026Updated 25/08/20264 min read

Actress Hayden Panettiere, best known to gamers as the original English voice of Kairi in Kingdom Hearts and as Sam in Until Dawn, has died at the age of 36. Her father, Skip Panettiere, confirmed her passing in a statement provided to ABC News on Sunday, August 16, calling it “the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden.”

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her, and to the millions who watched her onscreen,” her father said, also asking for privacy as the family grieves. No cause of death has been made public, and outlets including NBC News reported that her publicist, Kasey Kitchen, said an investigation was ongoing and “we should know more tomorrow.”

Kairi’s voice from Destiny Islands to Dream Drop Distance

For an entire generation of PlayStation 2 owners, Panettiere’s voice was inseparable from Kairi, Sora’s childhood friend and one of the Kingdom Hearts series’ seven Princesses of Heart. Gaming outlet GosuGamers confirmed that Kingdom Hearts fans will remember Panettiere for voicing Kairi in Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, cementing her as the character’s original English-language performer across three mainline entries.

Her role in the Square Enix and Disney crossover series didn’t stop there. She also played Xion in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, a character whose design and voice were deliberately tied to Kairi’s within the story’s mythology. Panettiere eventually stepped away from the franchise, and she did not reprise her dual roles for Kingdom Hearts III, where Alyson Stoner voiced both Kairi and Xion: a handover that had already begun years earlier, since Stoner also took over Kairi duties for Re:Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days.

Sam Giddings and the Until Dawn epilogue that hinted at more

Panettiere’s other major gaming credit came nearly a decade after Kingdom Hearts II, when she led the cast of Supermassive Games’ PS4 horror hit Until Dawn. Kotaku reported that she had a starring role in Until Dawn, providing both the voice and motion capture for Sam in the horror game, one of the eight playable teens fighting to survive a night on Blackwood Mountain.

She returned to the role decades later for the 2024 PS5 remake of the game. According to GosuGamers, Panettiere also played Samantha “Sam” Giddings, one of the main playable characters in the PlayStation horror game Until Dawn, and the actor reprised the role for a post-credit scene in Until Dawn’s 2024 remake, seemingly to tease a future sequel. That tease didn’t fully pay off for her character specifically, though, as Until Dawn 2 was later announced without her character returning to the fray.

From A Bug’s Life to Heroes and Nashville

Outside gaming, Panettiere built one of the more recognisable careers of her generation, beginning as a child performer before breaking out as cheerleader Claire Bennet in NBC’s superhero drama Heroes. The Hollywood Reporter noted she was also known for her work on Nashville and in the Scream franchise, having appeared in the films I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009), Scream 4 (2011) and Scream VI (2023) and the title role in the 2011 Lifetime telefilm Amanda Knox.

Her earliest on-screen work traces back even further than her teenage fame. Gamer-focused outlet Kotaku pointed out that she started acting as a child star and working on several Disney projects like A Bug’s Life and Dinosaur, meaning her voice work for Disney predates her Kingdom Hearts casting by several years, a fitting pedigree for a character built around a Disney-Square Enix partnership.

A memoir, a brother’s loss and an ongoing investigation

Panettiere had been in the public eye again in recent months following the May 2026 release of her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in which she discussed addiction, postpartum depression and the 2018 decision to give her daughter Kaya’s primary custody to her ex-fiancé, boxer Wladimir Klitschko. NBC News reported that Panettiere revealed this year that she struggled with postpartum depression and addiction, which she said led to her decision to give up custody of her only child, daughter Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, in 2018.

The memoir also revisited the loss of her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, who died suddenly in February 2023 from cardiomegaly (enlarged heart) coupled with aortic valve complications, his family said in a statement at the time. He was 28. As of publication, authorities had not released further details on the circumstances of Hayden Panettiere’s own death, and multiple outlets described the story as still developing.

Tributes have poured in across the Kingdom Hearts and horror-gaming communities since the news broke, with fan hubs and voice-acting databases alike updating their records to honour the actress who gave Kairi and Sam their voices for millions of players worldwide, including here in Australia and New Zealand, where both franchises retain dedicated followings nearly two decades on.