Rodriguez and Panettiere co-hosted the World Music Awards back in 2010. When asked what she remembers about Panettiere while walking the carpet at the 25th anniversary screening of “The Fast and the Furious,” Rodriguez told Variety, “Her curious spirit and how happy and joyous she is, because that’s her memory, right? I’ve got to tell you, man, I just can’t stand how many young people are leaving us lately. It’s disheartening, and it’s making me think, ‘What’s going on?’ It’s not normal.”
She added, “I don’t want to speculate about anything, but it’s weird. Just in general, the amount and the volume of it since 2010 to now, it’s a lot.”
Many celebrities shared tributes for Panettiere online after news broke of her death. Viola Davis, who starred alongside Panettiere in the 2016 drama film “Custody,” shared a tribute on Instagram, writing, “I wish the world had more time with you because I had a burning curiosity about who you were becoming. I saw this beautiful Phoenix rising from the ashes. Your tests became your testimony, and your testimony became your legacy. You will be remembered. Rest well, Hayden. Sending healing prayers to your family, your daughter, and all who loved you. May they always speak your name.”
Panettiere’s good friend and “One Tree Hill” star Bethany Joy Lenz likewise posted a remembrance on social media, along with photos of them together throughout the years. She wrote, “I knew the wild little blonde. Was she nine? Ten? I was eighteen. She ran through the Screen Gem studio hallways at 222 E44th St. laughing and playing games in between blocking and camera rehearsals. Long, unruly curls trailing behind her. She knew her lines and everyone else’s. Her intelligence was astonishing. She understood scenes and nuance and human struggle like no child I’d ever seen on camera. And she’d sit with you for a great conversation, then giggle and go play.”
A cause of death has yet to be released. Panettiere’s father told ABC News on Sunday night, “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.”
“We start shooting in December, if I can make good on the request from the studio,” Diesel told Variety Monday night at the 25th anniversary screening of “The Fast and the Furious.” “I’m in a good place, though. I had to go through four sets of writers, four years of development, to get to something that I felt would be worthy of a finale. And when I read the script a couple of weeks ago, [I cried].”
Inside the screening, Diesel addressed the audience before the lights dimmed and shared more details about how the “Fast Forever” script brought him to tears.
“I’m going to tell you something personal,” he said. “It was after four different writers, four years of development, and after I read the script, halfway through, one tear. By the end of the script that we crafted and worked so hard to make right for you after four years, I was crying. I couldn’t hold it back, and I had to tell everyone. And my sister said, ‘No more crying, bro.’ So I just want to say that sometimes, even the toughest guys in the world need to cry.”
“Fast Forever,” the 11th and final mainline film in the series, hits theaters on March 17, 2028. “Fast & Furious” is Universal’s longest-running franchise and its most profitable, with a combined worldwide gross of $7.3 billion.
While Diesel is all in on the latest “Fast Forever” draft, director Louis Leterrier recently told Polygon that he’s yet to read the script.
“I’d love to tell you the full truth, but I can’t,” Leterrier said. “There will be an ending, and it’s great. I was very, very lucky to be part of the franchise, and I love Vin and I love Universal. They’re great to work with. So yeah. We’ll see, hopefully.”
When Jimmy Kimmel announced that Rosie O’Donnell would be filling in as a week-long guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” during his summer vacation, he teased it would be “a special treat” for Donald Trump, who’s harbored a 20-year-long vendetta against the comic for her mocking his bankruptcies on “The View” back in 2006.
O’Donnell told Variety she was “surprised” by the guest-hosting offer from Kimmel, given the pair’s “adversarial relationship” and the fact that she’d never even been asked on as a guest, but she was “thankful” and accepted nevertheless, owing in large part to her support of Kimmel during Trump’s relentless campaign to get his late-night show canceled over jokes he didn’t like.
“I support [Kimmel] in what he’s doing with the First Amendment, and our ability as entertainers and citizens to speak out against our government that’s enshrined in the Founding Fathers’ writings about our government, so I think he’s fantastic,” O’Donnell said. “And I wish that Stephen Colbert had the same kind of support when it happened to him, because he shouldn’t be gone either.”
On Monday night, O’Donnell kicked off her “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” hosting duties by strutting out onstage in a bright pink suit adorned with flowers — to lengthy applause and chants of “RO-SIE! RO-SIE!” — before declaring, “If you thought the president hated ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel? Buckle up, people! Buckle up.”
The former host of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” and “The View” continued taking shots at her thin-skinned nemesis during her monologue, joking, “I’ve been living in Ireland for the past two years because of ‘Mango Mussolini.’ I read that Project 2025 and said, ‘Gotta get myself out of here!’ and I decided to go to Ireland where people are driven to drink regardless of who’s running their country.”
At one point during her monologue, she turned to the camera and addressed Trump, saying, “Hi! I know you’re watching!”
O’Donnell, 64, seemed cool and collected at the helm of a late-night show after decades away from TV hosting, regaling the audience with jokes about her time living in Ireland, including the disarming kindness of strangers (compared to New York City), their enthusiastic drinking and trying to ask out her (straight) pharmacist, and getting along famously with her guests, including “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, who announced herself as a huge Rosie fan (“I can’t believe I’m talking to Rosie O’Donnell… I’m losing my mind!” she exclaimed), and “Schmigadoon!’s” Ana Gasteyer.
Between guests, O’Donnell choked up while giving a moving tribute to the late Hayden Panettiere, who tragically passed away on Sunday at the age of 36. Panettiere had been a favorite guest of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” as a child actress.
“I’m just heartbroken over the passing of Hayden Panettiere last night. She was on my show many times as a little girl, and I got to know her as a grown woman,” offered O’Donnell. “And she was so brave talking about mental health before people were really ready to hear about it, and very sad. My love to her family and friends, and she will be missed. Godspeed, Hayden.”
Overall, O’Donnell seemed to acquit herself well as a late-night host. Cue the angry Trump posts.
On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter explains to Variety’s Michael Schneider how he got the chance to do a director’s cut of his 2008 “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” feature film. The new cut dubbed “The X-Files: I Want to Believe: Vrach Frankenshteyn” debuted Aug. 14 on Hulu and Disney+ outside the U.S.
Carter points out that his preferred cut is actually shorter than the original release, which ran 144 minutes, per IMDB.
“I always felt like people didn’t see the movie I intended to make,” Carter says, noting that 20th Century Studios executive Steve Asbell helped get the director’s cut project off the ground. “I asked him, ‘Have you ever thought about doing a director’s cut?’ And it was really just offhand. And he said, ‘Why? Would you like to do one?’ I said, ‘I’d love to do one.’ I can tell you, though, the reason for doing the director’s cut for me is not to put all the stuff that was taken out, but to put the right stuff in that was taken out.”
Carter discloses that for the original release in 2008, he was under a lot of pressure to ensure that the film would secure at PG-13 rating.
“When we showed them our first cut, the studio freaked out. They said, ‘This is torture porn. And you can’t do this for a PG-13 movie.’ So we cut it back and we satisfied them. And then we gave it to the motion picture folks, and they said, this isn’t a PG-13 movie. And we cut it back even further,” Carter says. “So the movie you’re seeing is, by and large, the movie that my partner in crime, [writer-producer] Frank Spotnitz, and I set out to make. And we always set out to make a very scary movie on a very limited budget, which is kind of the way we made ‘The X Files‘ TV series.”
David F. Sandberg has been tapped to direct a new psychological horror movie, “Mommy’s Home,” for Lionsgate.
From screenwriter James Morosini, “Mommy’s Home” follows “a young dad whose family life becomes terrifyingly unhinged when his cryogenically preserved mom is unfrozen and sent to live with him,” according to an official logline.
Sandberg is probably best known for writing and directing his viral YouTube short turned horror feature “Lights Out.” He also helmed “Shazam!” and its 2023 sequel. His most directing credit was 2025’s “Until Dawn,” a big-screen adaptation of the popular horror video game for Sony.
Sandberg’s other upcoming projects include the sci-fi horror “Below” for Netflix and Atomic Monster as well as “A Little Slice of Hell” for Paramount.
Morosini usually works in front of the camera as an actor, recently starring in “It’s What’s Inside” for Netflix and Steve Pink’s sci-fi thriller “Terrestrial.” “Mommy’s Home” marks Morosini’s second feature credit as a screenwriter, after penning, directing and starring in the 2022 dark comedy “I Love My Dad.”
Producers for “Mommy’s Home” are Craig Flores, Dawn Olmstead and Anonymous Content. Sandberg and Lotta Losten also produce through their company Mångata. Executive producers include Nathan Kahane, Morosini, David Levine, Garrett Kemble and Ryan Schwartz. Scott O’Brien and Maria Ascanio are overseeing the project for Lionsgate. Dan Freedmannegotiated the deal on behalf of the studio.
Sandberg is represented by CAA, Gotham Group, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein. Morosini is represented by CAA and Eric Brooks and Matt Rosen at GGSSC.
The InSneider was the first to report Sandberg’s involvement in “Mommy’s Home.”
Cardellini stars in the Peacock series as the franchise antagonist Pamela Voorhees. The show, premiering Oct. 15 on the streamer, follows Voorhees’ life prior to the events of the first “Friday the 13th” film. It also stars William Catlett as Levon Brooks, though exact character details remain under wraps.
“I remember one of my most fun moviegoing experiences was I saw ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ on the Universal City Walk, which is a giant movie theater, at the height of its popularity, and people were screaming at the screen and throwing things,” she told me Sunday at the HBO Max Emmy Nominee Celebration event in Hollywood.
Does she predict the same for the new TV show? “This is a longer format so there’s a lot more you get to do in eight episodes,” Cardellini said. “It’s not necessarily like 90 minutes of pure horror. There’s a lot of story there. So maybe once in a while you’ll throw some things and scream.”
And possibly cover your eyes.
“It does get gory, yes, so much so that I wish sometimes they weren’t as practical as they were,” Cardellini said. “There’s a couple of gory moments on set that were very practical that were pretty gross. Blood everywhere at one point.”
Linda Cardellini teases the upcoming “Friday the 13th” prequel series, “Crystal Lake”:
“This is a longer format so there’s a lot more you get to do in eight episodes,” Cardellini said. “It’s not necessarily like 90 minutes of pure horror. There’s a lot of story there. So maybe… pic.twitter.com/NCB60HsEYq
Cardellini said most horror scripts she’s given are for characters who are running away from the killer. “Everything that I’ve ever read that was handed to me that was in that space was for the person who was being chased, not the person who was chasing everyone,” she said. “It was really fun this time to be on the other side of the knife.”
Pamela first appeared in the original “Friday the 13th” movie in 1980 as Jason’s mother. She exacts revenge on people who she believed were responsible for Jason’s drowning in 1957 at Camp Crystal Lake.
Cardellini attended the HBO Max Emmy event to celebrate her nomination for her work in “DTF St. Louis.”
It’s uncommon to meet an actor bold enough to call Ari Emanuel, the executive chairman of WME Group and one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a “prick” on the record.
But it’s also uncommon to interview an actor as unfiltered as Steve Way.
“I want an agency to whore me out,” he says. “Let’s make a ton of money together. Let’s change the world.” I joke that I’ll pass along his exact words to all the big companies. “Just get Ari on the phone,” he retorts. “Ari loves me. Except he won’t hire me.” That’s when Way mutters the p-word — under his breath for plausible deniability, but certainly still with the intention of being heard, smirking at the sound of my laughter. This is one of the last things he says to me before we wrap up our interview. A light blue Labubu that he’s clipped to his motorized wheelchair gives a wink as he rolls away.
It’s impossible to fault Way, 35, for his ire. That’s partially because it’s well delivered — he’s got 15 years of stand-up comedy under his belt — but mostly because he works in an industry that seems determined to shut out people like him. Best known for his recurring role in Ramy Youssef’s self-titled dramedy series, and now giving an impeccable supporting performance in Hulu’s “Furious,” Way has no agent or manager. “And we know why,” he says, referring to his chair, his ventilator and the muscular dystrophy diagnosis he received at age 4.
“I don’t have representation. And it’s frustrating, because I used to,” Way says. With his first agent, he got “nothing. Just nothing.” He signed with someone new, who later jumped to another agency and didn’t bring Way with him.
Left to right: Ramy Youssef, Steve Way and Bella Hadid in “Ramy” Season 3.
Courtesy of Hulu
Way spent years wondering whether he’d be able to book a project without the support of Youssef, a close friend since childhood. Then, with “Furious,” he received something actors spend their whole careers dreaming of: a role written expressly for him.
“Furious” is helmed by Elizabeth Meriwether, the writer-producer famed for creating “New Girl” and “The Dropout,” whom Way first met in 2025 when they appeared together on a WGA panel about on-screen depictions of caregiving. “I did the panel really high,” Way admits. He’d been on a stand-up tour as Youssef’s opener, and needed to relax after all the travel. “We’re going down the line talking about what we’re working on. Full resumes. And it got to me, and I was like, ‘I’m unemployed. If anyone wants to put me in their stuff, [I’ll join] gladly,’” Way recalls. Meriwether took his stoned comments to heart. “Two months later, I got an email from her people saying she wrote a part for me. That was it.”
Way stars in the series as the love interest of the serial killer played by Lola Petticrew. To everyone else, Catherine is a sociopath. But to Alden, she’s simply a kindhearted in-home health aide who perhaps has a few secrets. As she feeds and bathes him with a gentle touch and a warm gaze, he returns the favor by giving her the benefit of the doubt about her shady comings and goings. Wanting to make the most of the time he has left after learning from doctors that his health has seriously worsened, Alden later proposes to Catherine with his late mother’s engagement ring, then begins abetting her crimes.
There’s a profound sadness to the role, but “Furious” still makes plenty of room for the humor Way is known for. He applauds Meriwether for writing a disabled character who confronts his mortality but still has an identity beyond that, including a sense of humor. “When I read my first line — ‘You little slut!’ — I thought, ‘How does Liz know I would say that?” he says, smiling. “Right away, I knew that she would do the character justice.”
When Danny (Scoot McNairy), a cop, suggests that Catherine is using him, Alden is resolute. “I don’t fucking care,” he says. “You think love is only when people do everything that you want them to do. That’s fucked up.”
Way intimately understands that sentiment. “Everything is transactional. And as a disabled person, it’s very empowering to understand that. Caregiving is a two-way street. It has to be in order to work.” And the concept, in his eyes, isn’t exclusive to the relationship between disabled people and their aides. “Society has told a lot of lies about disabled people, mostly that we’re a burden. It’s not true. And to understand that is to accept that everyone, at some point in their life, receives care.”
“When you take the subway, you don’t do that alone. Someone’s driving,” Way continues. “When you get DoorDash, that’s a level of care. So when Alden says that to Scoot’s character, in a way, he’s trying to radicalize him. Like, ‘You don’t get it, man.’” Smiling, he offers a phrase borrowed from his friend Danny Kurtzman, a fellow actor-producer with muscular dystrophy. “’Disabled love is the best love.’ Because of how intimate it is. How close you have to be,” he says.
Lola Petticrew and Steve Way in “Furious.”
Courtesy of Disney
In Way’s opinion, “Alden and Catherine have the best relationship in the show: They had to get everything [uncomfortable] out of the way first and set up boundaries to make sure they could handle it. Like, ‘What’s your history with this person who’s keeping you alive? What do I do for them?’ It’s delicate, but there have to be boundaries, because it’s easy for any caregiver to get burnt out. That was really fun to figure out.”
“Furious” was everything Way would have hoped for in terms of disability accommodations, thanks to the help of an on-set accessibility coordinator. “She made sure I was OK and advocated for me when I was really in the zone. Not once did I ever feel unsafe or not taken care of. It allowed me to just focus on the character. I wanted to feel the love and trust, to find our routines. Like, how would she would shower me? But also something as delicate as: How do we sit across from each other? How do we face each other lying down in a bed?”
There were still moments when Way found himself pushing against his limits, physically. “There were some scenes that were uncomfortable — lying down for any extended period,” he says. But the discomfort was worth it to him. “I was locked in. Nothing else mattered; I just turned it off. The only thing that matters is the art that we’re operating here. That was my temporary. Yeah, the art. That’s it. The right thing for art, you know. That’s something that I realized no one can take away from me.
Before “Furious,” Way wasn’t sure if his three-season run on “Ramy” had been enough to prove his talents to the industry. “I was scared people wouldn’t take me seriously. One time could be a fluke,” he says. “But twice? I’m pretty good at this.”
Courtesy of Disney
There’s still a long road ahead. Twice, Way has worked with a studio to develop a series he would create and star in himself, but both Apple TV and NBCUniversal ultimately passed. “It’s about the inner workings of a facility for disabled people,” he says. “We want to have a full disabled cast and show what it’s like to live in one building with not enough caregivers, with an administration who has no idea what they’re doing, in a country that doesn’t treat us the best. I think a lot of people will relate to it, and they’ll see the absurdity in our day-to-day.”
Slyly, he adds, “Shoutout Netflix!” — the streamer he hopes will be his next suitor.
He’s gone through something similar with his stand-up comedy. He dreams of headlining his own tour. “It’s so hard to find accessible venues, but they’re out there. I gotta do my hour first, though,” he says. He’s already prepared — and taped — a full set he feels ready to show the world. He just hasn’t found a platform willing to help him turn it into a special. “Shoutout HBO!” he says.
It’s par for the course at this point. “I’m numb to the noes,” Way says. “Because the noes have never stopped. And that’s OK. That’s just life; it’s no one’s fault. But it’s tough, because I have these big opportunities, and I don’t trust them.” With “Furious,” he tells me, he didn’t fully believe he’d get to be on TV again until his first day on set. “So when I hear that someone is interested in my show, I’ll take a meeting, but I don’t expect anything.”
Still, he’s built more than he ever imagined for himself when he was younger. “I didn’t think I could have a career of any kind, because everyone told me I wouldn’t live long,” he says. “I almost died when I was 14, and I wasn’t supposed to live past 18. Then, when I was 25, my doctors told me I’m good. I was like, ‘Fuck! What now?’ I wasn’t good at anything besides telling jokes.”
So he keeps telling them. “The only thing that’s gonna stop me is my heart,” he says.
And he’s also starting to enjoy the effects of the opportunity Meriwether gave him in “Furious.” For the first time, Way has a publicist, which he says has been “wonderful.”
“It’s nice to respond to emails for once instead of initiating them, which is what I do every day,” Way says. Without a team behind him, the burden of seeking out the few roles available to disabled actors falls on him alone. “It’s tiring,” he says. “Espresso helps. Vodka helps. But I can’t run on that stuff forever.”
The California attorney general’s office fired back against Paramount’s request for a $1.88 billion bond on Monday, saying the company is seeking a “do-over” on its agreement to delay the Warner Bros. merger until an antitrust trial next March.
In a statement, the A.G.’s office argued that Paramount is a “sophisticated” company that knew it would face regulatory review when it agreed to pay Warner Bros. shareholders a $7 million-per-day ticking fee, and that California should not be made to bear the burden of that decision.
“Bottom line: Paramount went into this process with eyes wide open,” the office said. “They are lying in a bed of their own making, and once again, trying to blackmail us to get us to back down.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is leading a 12-state coalition to block the merger on the grounds that it will reduce competition in the theatrical and basic cable markets. Last month, Paramount agreed to hold off on closing the deal until after the case is resolved at trial, or until next June, whichever comes first.
But Paramount was hoping for an earlier trial date — ideally in November. In a motion filed on Monday, the company argued that it will be forced to pay $1.7 billion in ticking fees to Warner Bros. shareholders if the case drags out until June 1, plus another $190 million in financing costs.
Paramount argues that the states and the Writers Guild of America — which has filed its own antitrust suit — should be required to post a bond to cover its losses arising from the delay in the event that the deal is ultimately approved.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin initially granted a 14-day restraining order to block the merger in July. In that order, she waived the requirement to post a bond, saying the states had shown they were acting in pursuit of “important public interests.”
The states, the WGA and Paramount later entered a stipulation to delay the merger — the functional equivalent of a preliminary injunction — which did not include any bond requirement. Now that Martinez-Olguin has set the trial for March 2, Paramount is seeking to amend the agreement to include the $1.88 billion bond. Failing that, Paramount wants to dissolve the deal and allow the merger to close.
“Paramount and Warner Bros. are two sophisticated companies who willfully decided to include a costly ticking fee as a provision in their merger contract. They knew this merger would undergo regulatory review; they knew it was not a done deal; and they chose to include it anyway,” the A.G.’s office said Monday. “What’s more, Paramount itself stipulated to the timing it is now protesting — they agreed to the dates and did not request a bond as a condition of agreeing not to close until after the trial, and potentially as late as June 2027. Now, they’re trying to get a do-over.”
In a statement on Monday, Paramount argued that the 12 states are defying a global consensus that the deal presents no issues of competitive harm and should be approved.
“We remain confident that plaintiffs’ case is without merit and will defend our pro-competitive transaction in court,” the company said.
President Donald Trump grew angry at CNN‘s Kristen Holmes during a press briefing at the White House Monday, after she asked whether he had spoken with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“Quiet,” Trump told Holmes, CNN’s senior White House correspondent, after she queried the president about if Jong-un had asked Trump to curtail U.S. military exercises with South Korea. “You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re faking news!”
In a social media post Sunday, Trump had said that “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea” and that he would instruct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”
Holmes tried to follow up on her question to the president, saying, “I was trying to find out if you had been talking to Kim Jong-un, if he had asked you to scale back on those military exercises.” Trump, talking over her, said: “Be quiet! Be quiet! Be quiet! You’re a fake reporter and you report fake news.”
Meanwhile, the White House lashed out at Holmes because during the same event, she asked Trump for his response to a remark by Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff about one of Trump’s aides. Earlier in the day at a campaign rally, Ossoff said that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” referring to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant. Harp was among the small group of Trump officials who (along with the president) were secretly escorted off the Qatar-donated Air Force One to a smaller military aircraft in Turkey because of a threat from Iran.
Following the exchange in the Oval Office, the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account on X wrote, “.@KristenhCNN is a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession. @POTUS hosts a hero lifeguard in the Oval Office and she uses it as an opportunity to take a cheap shot about one of President Trump’s staffers. These scumbags are the lowest of the low.” The press event Monday at the White House was meant to honor teenage lifeguard Ryder Williams, who rescued a 10-year-old boy at a beach in Santa Cruz, California, last month.
The White House comms team followed that up with this comment: “.@KristenhCNN: Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
In a statement responding to the White House attacks, CNN said, “Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House. This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people. Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press. We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”
Alexa PenaVega’s “heart is heavy” after the death of Hayden Panettiere, most notably because it marks the third passing of a fellow child star in 2026. The “Spy Kids” actor noted in a statement on social media that she rose to fame with and grew up alongside the likes of Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase. All three actors died in their 30s between February and August.
“Hayden, Michelle, Daveigh… my heart is heavy today,” PenaVega wrote. “These aren’t just names from my childhood. They’re girls I grew up alongside, sharing a world that was exciting and also incredibly hard. We were kids navigating something so big, and not everyone had the foundation or support they deserved.”
“Today, I’m grieving and holding their families close in my prayers and thinking of everyone still fighting battles we can’t see,” she added. “Hug your people close today.”
PenaVega, Panettiere, Trachtenberg and Chase all came of age together in Hollywood in the 2000s. PenaVega’s breakout turn in 2001’s “Spy Kids” made her a regular at Hollywood premieres, where she was often photographed with her fellow child-turned-teen stars. Chase and PenaVega walked part of Disney’s “Freaky Friday” red carpet together in 2003 (one year after Chase voiced Lilo in the studio’s animated movie “Lilo & Stitch”), while PenaVega attended the premiere of Panettiere’s “Raising Helen” in 2004, among several other Hollywood encounters.
Panettiere died on Sunday in Greenville, South Carolina, at the age of 36. Her death is currently under investigation, but there were “not any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances,” according to police. She was beloved for the television series “Heroes” and “Nasvhille,” but she broke out as a Disney child star in “A Bug’s Life” and “Remember the Titans,” among other hit roles.
Also beginning work as a child actor, Trachtenberg appeared in the ’90s Nickelodeon series “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” before starring in the family film “Harriet the Spy” in 1996 at the age of 10. As a teenager, she featured as Dawn Summers in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and later played Georgina Sparks on the teen drama “Gossip Girl.” Trachtenberg died in February at 39 years old due to natural causes, as a result of complications from diabetes mellitus.
Chase, who voiced Lilo in “Lilo & Stitch” and starred in “The Ring,” died June 16 in Los Angeles at 35. The actor’s cause of death was AIDS, according to the coroner’s office. A secondary cause was listed as “chronic polysubstance use.” Chase’s father, John David Schwallier, told the New York Times that she had been homeless and had struggled with drugs since the age of 13.
