Hayden Panettiere and Wladimir Klitschko at the Steiger Awards in 2011 in Bochum, Germany. The former couple were very active on Ukraine issues. Andreas Rentz/Getty Images There were many times in the early 2000s when the Klitschko brothers ruled the boxing world just as Hayden Panettiere ruled the television world. On April 22, 2006, Wladimir Klitschko won the IBF heavyweight title by resoundingly defeating reigning champion Chris Byrd, an event the boxing writer John Hively called “one of the most momentous dates in the history of boxing.”
A few weeks later, the NBC genre-bending phenomenon Heroes would wrap its first season, and Panettiere’s status as a breakout star (she is the show’s cheerleader we needed to save) was cemented with it. The outpouring of love shown Panettiere in the day since the 36-year-old was found dead in South Carolina has been abundant, the actress embraced by both her co-stars and a wider Hollywood. But the connection to the Ukrainian folk hero Klitschko — regarded by many boxing insiders as one of the most physically and mentally dominant heavyweight champions of all time — was less known to casual fans. So too is Panettiere’s political advocacy on behalf of Ukraine, a reminder that while struggling young actors may become best known for tabloid headlines, they are just as often making an impact on gritty real-world problems in ways that get far less attention. Panettiere and Klitschko (five years younger than his boxer and politician brother Vitali, and the more decorated prizefighter) would meet at a party in 2008, at the apex of their respective fame. At 18, she was actually in a relationship with Heroes co-star Milo Ventimiglia at the time, but they enjoyed a flirtatious moment when the 5′ 2″ entertainer said to the 6′ 6″ boxer “you’re huge,” prompting him to say “you’re tiny.” They would start dating the following year.
Related Stories
General News Coroner Overseeing Hayden Panettiere's Autopsy Finds No Signs of Trauma
General News Hayden Panettiere Recently Spoke About Child-Star Pressure, Struggles With Postpartum Depression and Addiction
They would go on to pursue a romance that was both public and, at times, dramatic. Years before Taylor and Travis, a beloved entertainment figure and a larger-than-life athlete were swooning in public. Panettiere would attend Klitschko’s fights like Swift goes to Chiefs games, and he would sometimes attend her Hollywood events. Both their careers were humming — Wladimir was a rare unified heavyweight title-holder from 2008 all the way until 2015, while she would go on to a conversation-starting role as a hot country-music comer in Nashville beginning in 2012, in the middle of all that. The couple survived a brief breakup and would become engaged in 2013, having their daughter Kaya a little over a year later. So entwined were they in each other’s public lives that Panettiere actually joined her partner and his brother Vitali onstage at the Maidan protests in central Kyiv in December 2013 amid the country’s bid to oust Putin-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and join the EU, the actress imploring the crowd to stand up to the bully next door. “Keep fighting,” she said. “The world will hear you.” Yanukovych fled in February 2014, Russia invaded Crimea several days later, and Vitali Klitschko was elected mayor of Kyiv in May. A former child star, Panettiere publicly spoke of how few choices were left to her pretty much from the jump. And while her interest in the subject of Ukrainian sovereignty was almost certainly sparked by her partner, a tuned-in onlooker will clock how a story about an attempt to resist domination of a powerful, unseverable force might particularly speak to her. Panettiere and Klitschko eventually split, and the actress, amid self-admitted postpartum depression and addiction struggles, would lose custody of Kaya, who in 2018 went to live with Klitschko in Ukraine. Life in wartime for Panettiere’s daughter was certainly not easy — not least because Wladimir enlisted in the Ukrainian army during the all-hands moment when Russia invaded in 2022. (Kaya at one point, at least, was not in Ukraine.) Though she and Klitschko were not together, Panettiere continued her Ukrainian activism as the war set in, posting messages of solidarity on Instagram (“This horrific moment in history sends a terrifying message. … I wish you had more support and I wish I was there fighting with you,” she said to the people of the country). She also regularly posted various donation sites on her social accounts and founded a nonprofit relief agency called Hoplon International that Wladimir Klitschko praised in his own post.
“I can’t continue to sit on the sidelines watching as this disaster rages on,” Panettiere said as she made a plea for Americans to donate money to Hoplon to help buy food, military equipment and medical supplies, calling what was happening to ordinary citizens in Ukraine “gut-wrenching.” It remains so, all the way into the summer of 2026 (more Ukrainian civilians died in July than any month since March 2022), Panettiere gone as the war rages on.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
