Born August 21, 1989, in Palisades, New York. Hayden Panettiere's father, Skip Panettiere, was a lieutenant in the local fire department, and her mother, Lesley Panettiere, was a soap opera actress. Before her first birthday, Panettiere had already begun modeling and acting.
Panettiere began to display real range with back-to-back roles as a troubled 15-year-old suddenly placed in the care of her happy-go-lucky fashion model aunt (Kate Hudson) in the comedy, "Raising Helen" (2004), and as a teen daughter struggling to understand her father's sex change operation in the HBO film, "Normal" (HBO, 2003). She began a recurring role on the offbeat Fox sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle" (Fox, 2000-06) while co-starring opposite J ly Fisher as the daughter of a cash-strapped con-mom-on-the-run in "Lies My Mother Told Me" (Lifetime, 2004).
she appeared in a number of small movie parts as well as one of the lead voices in Pixar's A_Bug's_Life. After Panettiere showed up in such films as Remember the Titans and Joe_Somebody, her next notable role was Maddie Harrington, the long-lost daughter of the quirky title character on Fox's Ally McBeal. Along with supporting parts in Raising_Helen and Racing_Stripes and the lead in the second straight-to-DVD Bring_It_On sequel, several more small TV roles followed before 2006, when she was cast on Heroes as the cheerleader with the ability to spontaneously heal herself. A major hit with television viewers, Heroes was nominated for Emmy awards every year from 2006 through 2010
