Hayden Panettiere became a major TV name thanks to shows like ‘Heroes,’ but her acting journey started much earlier. Long before she became known as Claire Bennet, Panettiere was already dealing with some pretty intense storylines on daytime TV.
Her first television acting role came on the classic ABC soap ‘One Life to Live,’ and she was only a child at the time.
Hayden Panettiere Got Her Start On ‘One Life To Live’
Panettiere joined ‘One Life to Live‘ in 1994 as Sarah Roberts, the daughter of Tina Lord and Cord Roberts. She remained on the soap until 1997 and worked alongside some of its longtime stars while getting her first real taste of TV acting.
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Sarah also found herself pulled into some heavy storylines. One memorable scene involved Victoria “Viki” Lord, the Lord family matriarch who lived with dissociative identity disorder linked to childhood trauma. Sarah came face-to-face with Viki’s alter ego Jean Randolph and asked, “What are you hiding from us, Aunt Viki?“.
Panettiere later opened up about those early years in her 2026 memoir, ‘This Is Me: A Reckoning‘. She admitted she did not always have many lines, but memorizing them came pretty naturally. “At that age, my brain was a sponge,” she wrote. “Every night, I could memorize more than the day before and recall them more quickly on the car ride to set.” She added, “I learned how to cram when I was five.”
‘Guiding Light’ Gave Her Even Wilder Storylines
After leaving ‘One Life to Live‘ in 1997, Panettiere did not take much of a break from soap life. She moved straight over to ‘Guiding Light,’ playing Lizzie Spaulding from 1997 until 2000. Somehow, Lizzie’s life got even more intense. Panettiere gave a pretty memorable summary of Lizzie’s storylines while speaking to Stephen Colbert in 2017.
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“They threw me down a well,” she shared. “I got leukemia, not once but twice. I was kidnapped … shot my mom’s boyfriend,” she continued. For one young character, Lizzie really went through a lot. Crying also became a regular part of the job. While promoting her memoir in May 2026, Panettiere revealed that producers realized she could cry on demand and started writing more emotional scenes for her. “Once they figured that out, it was just like, I never stopped crying,” she said.
Being able to cry whenever a scene demanded it might have been useful on set, but Panettiere later admitted there was another side. Getting into those emotions meant taking herself to some painful places, especially while performing such difficult material at a young age.
“You go through life experiences, and the imagery,” she said. “You then have to go to places that you bring yourself [to that] are so dark and so ugly. And you’re sitting there, then afterwards, getting praise and love for it. You’re going, ‘Oh my God, when I feel pain, I get love.‘”
Following Panettiere’s death, fans have been looking back at the different chapters of her career. ‘Heroes‘ may be one of the roles most closely linked to her name, but her TV story began much earlier.
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