While death is part of the cycle of life and considered the norm, when a celebrity or well-known person passes away, the whole world tends to send their condolences, share memories and, in some cases, remind us of just how much that person was part of our lives.
Hayden Panettiere, who died at 36 on August 16, is one of those shockers for those who grew up with her as a prominent figure in our teenage movie lives.
Her family confirmed her death, with her father, Alan “Skip” Panettiere, remembering her as “an incredible light” and “a force of nature”.
But beyond the tributes from Hollywood, there has been another kind of mourning happening online.
People are remembering the movies. And if you grew up in the 2000s, you probably have a Hayden Panettiere memory of your own.
Back when we still hired movies at Vee’s or Mr Video, picking a film could become a whole Saturday afternoon activity.
You walked through the aisles looking at the covers, argued with your friends about what to get and, if you were lucky, managed to convince your parents to hire the one you had already watched three times.
Panettiere was attached to plenty of those memories.
According to IMDB, she was born on August 21, 1989 in Palisades, New York, to actress Lesley Vogel and fire department captain Skip Panettiere. Her younger brother was actor Jansen Panettiere (1994-2023).
Her parents are both of half Italian descent, along with German and English. Her mother got her started in the business by doing commercials when she was just 11 months old. Then, at only 4 1/2, she was cast on the soap opera One Life to Live (1968), where she remained until 1997.
Since then, she has gone on to appear in many feature films and TV movies. But she is probably best known in the United States for her role as "Claire" on the hit TV show, Heroes (2006).
For many of us, one of the earliest would have been "A Bug’s Life". She voiced Dot, the little princess ant, in the 1998 Pixar animation, a film that became a familiar part of childhood for anyone who grew up watching animated movies in that era.
"Ice Princess" was another one.
Panettiere played Gen Harwood, the confident skater in a film that made competitive ice skating look like something every teenage girl should be considering.
The friendships, the rivalry, the costumes and the big performances all felt important.
For a South African teenager watching it, the world on screen was very American and very far from our everyday lives. But we loved it anyway.
"Bring It On: All or Nothing" took that even further.
American high schools had cheerleading squads, elaborate routines, uniforms and competitions that looked nothing like most of our school sports days.
That did not stop us from wanting to be part of it.
You would watch the routines and try them with your friends. If your school did not have cheerleading, you made do. Dance groups became their own little culture.
Friends would practise routines during breaks, after school or at someone's house. Someone always knew a move from a movie or music video and suddenly everyone wanted to learn it.
You will forever run Crenshaw, Britney Allen.
Panettiere's character gave a generation of teenagers something to copy, even if the American high school experience we were watching did not exist in our own schools.
That was the magic of those movies.
They showed us things that were completely foreign to us and somehow made them feel close enough to try.
Panettiere gave us some of the most recognisable films and shows of the 2000s. She appeared in "Scream 4", played Kirby Reed and later took on the role of country singer Juliette Barnes in "Nashville", earning two Golden Globe nominations for the role.
And who can forget "I Love You, Beth Cooper", where Panettiere played the popular high school girl at the centre of a chaotic graduation-night adventure. It was another one of those 2000s teen movies that felt like a rite of passage for a generation raised on that era of Hollywood.
"Heroes" was another defining moment.
Claire Bennet was the cheerleader who could heal from almost anything, and the show's famous line, “Save the cheerleader, save the world”, became part of the vocabulary of the time. Panettiere was only 17 when "Heroes" premiered in 2006.
For teenagers watching it then, the show felt huge.
It was the kind of programme you discussed with friends. You had your favourite character, your theories and the episodes everyone was talking about. For some fans, those memories are now resurfacing alongside the news of her death.
We rarely remember every detail of a show we watched 20 years ago. But we remember where we were when we watched it.
The television in the lounge. The DVD player.
The friend who was obsessed with the same character. The sleepover. The school holiday.
The movie you watched so many times that you knew what was coming before the scene even started. Panettiere was part of that period for a lot of us.
She also happened to grow up in front of us. Her career began when she was a child, meaning audiences could watch her move from child roles into teenage films and eventually adult television.
That makes the age of her death difficult to process.
Thirty-six is young, but for the people who watched Panettiere in the 2000s, it is also an age that feels uncomfortably close.
The children who watched her on tv screens are now adults. Some are parents. Some are the same age Panettiere was. Some are older.
The actress who once seemed like part of our generation's childhood is now someone we are mourning.
Her death has brought back a world that felt much simpler: video shops, DVDs, teen movies, television shows we actually had to wait for and afternoons spent watching the same film because there was nothing else quite like it.
Those movies were part of how we learnt about the world outside our own.
We watched American teenagers go to prom, join cheerleading squads, form dance crews, fall in love, fight with their parents and somehow still make it to school the next morning.
We took bits of what we saw and made them our own, even when our schools, our accents and our everyday lives looked nothing like theirs.
That is the funny thing about culture. You never quite know what is going to stick.
A line from a movie. A character's outfit. A dance routine you tried with your friends. A song you heard so many times that you still know every word.
Years later, those little things can come rushing back because someone who was part of that world is suddenly no longer here.
Panettiere was only 36, but her work stretches across a period that now feels like another lifetime. The children who watched her are adults.
The video shops are gone. DVDs have become something many children today will barely know. The shows we waited a week to watch can now be streamed in a night.
Yet those memories remain.
Not every person who matters to us has to know our name. Sometimes an actor, a musician or a television character simply arrives at the right moment and becomes part of the soundtrack of growing up.
We carry those people with us without even realising it.
Until one day, we hear that they are gone and find ourselves talking about the movies we watched, the friends we watched them with and the person we were back then.
Hayden Panettiere gave a generation plenty to remember. And judging by the reaction to her death, we remembered far more than we realised.
bernelee.vollmer@nationalmg.co.za