Christy Carlson Romano Wrote an Elle Essay Comparing Early Fame to CTE Days After Hayden Panettiere Died at 36
· Thought Catalog
Updated 3 minutes ago, August 20, 2026
“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. As a society, are we not starting to see that notoriety comes at a cost, even when it’s decades later?
—Christy Carlson Romano, in an essay days after Hayden Panettiere’s death
Christy Carlson Romano wrote those words in a personal essay for Elle published August 18, two days after Hayden Panettiere was found in cardiac arrest at her South Carolina home and pronounced dead at 36.
Romano, 42, grew up in the industry alongside her. She started on “Even Stevens” and voiced “Kim Possible” as a kid, and she’s been open about her own sobriety over the years. Panettiere, who began acting at 11 months old and landed her first major role on “One Life to Live” at 4, spoke publicly about her struggles with addiction and mental health.
In the essay Romano argues that young actors weather constant rejection before their “frontal lobes have fully formed,” and that the damage surfaces years later. “The industry gives us the wound and then acts surprised when we reach for something to treat it,” she wrote.
Related Articles
She also named the way blame gets passed around until it lands on the performer. “Stage parents blame producers, producers blame parents, networks blame culture, and culture then blames the child when the child becomes an adult in pain,” she wrote. “By then, the young performer is no longer cute enough to protect. They are a cautionary tale. A headline.”
Of Panettiere specifically, she wrote: “I am thinking of Hayden, her daughter, the people who loved her in real life, not as a headline, not as a symbol.”
Thank you for reading. Catch all of Thought Catalog’s latest on Facebook and our website.