Young stars are thrust into fame and riches - but the spotlight can be deadly

August 18, 2026 — 10:28am

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Reflecting on the price of her fame, Lady Gaga once said the transaction of celebrity effectively made her everyone’s property. “It’s legal to follow me. It’s legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can’t call the police or ask them to leave,” she said.

Another pop star, Billie Eilish, was more blunt. “I had a panic attack every single night,” she once told Rolling Stone, of the period in her life where fame came crashing through the front door. “I cried for two hours every night. It was really, really bad.”

Just how bad can it be? You could well have asked Hayden Panettiere, but the 36-year-old New York-born singer and actress was found unresponsive and in cardiac arrest yesterday, and died at the scene. In her recent memoir, however, Panettiere gave a clear picture of her personal struggles.

By her own admission, Panettiere struggled with addiction, anxiety and postpartum depression. In a May interview with British podcaster and author Jay Shetty, Panettiere said she “did not have a good reaction” to her former partner moving to Europe with their young daughter.

“I was struggling with mental health and anxiety and the postpartum and having to act my way through it and just feeling like I completely lost myself,” Panettiere said. There was a misconception she had been forced into treatment “when, in fact, I have been the one who sought it out”.

“It became this horrible cycle for years of battling depression, alcoholism and substance abuse and me just trying to find my........

© Brisbane Times