Melissa Gilbert Demands Protection for Child Stars After Hayden Panettiere's Death: 'Enough Is Enough'

Melissa Gilbert stood up for the protection of child stars after Hayden Panettiere's tragic demise at 36 last week.

On Substack, she shared an essay titled "Enough Is Enough," writing, “Within one year, Michelle Trachtenberg, Daveigh Chase and Hayden Panettiere have died.”

She added, “Three former female child actors of the same generation are gone. Tragically, heartbreakingly, agonizingly too soon.”

“They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, ‘WHY?’ Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?” she continued.

Trachtenberg died in February 2025, aged 39, from complications of diabetes mellitus, while Chase passed away on June 16, aged 36, from AIDS.

Panettiere, meanwhile, was found dead on August 16 at a Greenville, South Carolina, Airbnb, where she was staying with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Brian Hickerson.

The producer, 62, admitted that while she "did not know Hayden personally and only worked briefly with Mishy and Daveigh," it still "felt personal" to her "because I was them."

“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,” Gilbert wrote. “When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”

She then called out Hollywood, explaining that people “know the stories of how the entertainment industry uses, abuses, exploits and then throws away its youngest.”

“But for some reason, this trend is getting worse,” she added. “My thinking is that it is tied to the invention of the mobile phone.”

The producer argued that actors face a lack of privacy in public as well as in the media, posing the question, “How do we fix or end this before someone else dies?”

Gilbert reflected on growing up in the entertainment industry while starring in Little House on the Prairie, writing, “I can’t tell you how many times I worked while horribly sick, injured or worse.”

She said she was only 11 when her father died, but had to return to work "within months."

“And not one single adult on that set discussed it with me or offered condolences,” she confessed, having played Laura Ingalls on the beloved western series. “I later found out that the fear was I would become too upset to work. I was eleven, my Daddy had just died and I was shattered.”

“Thank God my character cried in every single episode. That, as twisted as it sounds, was my therapy. My release,” she added.

Gilbert also suggested that former child stars should come together to “enact real, substantive change.”

Concluding her emotional essay, she revealed that she has an image of Panettiere’s 11-year-old daughter, Kaya, growing up without her mom.

“And now I am weeping as I type this and I just want to scream from the rooftops,” she signed off, adding, “ENOUGH!”