Neutrogena Broke Its Silence on Hayden Panettiere’s Death and Promised Money for Postpartum Depression Care
by Chrissy Stockton · Thought CatalogUpdated 2 minutes ago, August 20, 2026
Hayden Panettiere said Neutrogena dropped her after she went public with postpartum depression. Days after she died at 36, the brand admitted it “made her feel unsupported” and pledged money for women who need the same care she was fighting for.
Neutrogena kept Hayden Panettiere as its face for a decade, then dropped her after she spoke publicly about postpartum depression, according to what she told Us Weekly in May.
Panettiere died August 16 at 36 in South Carolina, where police responded to reports of an unresponsive woman and a possible drug overdose. The star had also been open about battling addiction.
The brand stayed quiet until fans called for a boycott over the resurfaced firing claims. On Thursday it posted a statement saying she was “a valued member of our Neutrogena community” and that “we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time. This is not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be.”
Related Articles
The company said it’s making “a significant investment” to a community health partner to give more women access to support, including care for postpartum depression, with details to come.
Panettiere described the day she got the news in that same interview. “After that interview on [Live With] Kelly and Michael, when I said I had postpartum depression, I had no idea when I walked off that stage that I was going to get the call saying, ‘Neutrogena wants to fire you, wants to drop you. They’re not OK with this.'”
She served as the brand’s spokeswoman from 2005 to 2015. Three months before her death she published a memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” that described the “strict morality clause” she lived under, saying: “Neutrogena girls didn’t do that.”
Thank you for reading. Catch all of Thought Catalog’s latest on Facebook and our website.